Europe
As is typical, the second day of the JP Morgan Annual Healthcare Conference—conducted virtually this year because of the pandemic—had plenty of news from the largest biopharma companies globally.
In an interview with BioSpace, Marianne De Backer, Head of Business Development & Licensing in Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, outlined Bayer’s thought process for opening its purse strings and diving into the deep end of the cell and gene therapy space.
The collaboration, which will leverage Enara’s Dark Antigen™ discovery platform, will work toward discovering and validating novel “Dark Antigens” in up to three tumor types in both lung and gastrointestinal cancer.
The novel immune checkpoint inhibitor Sanofi deemed worthy of such an investment is BND-22, a humanized IgG4 antagonist antibody targeting the Ig-like transcript 2 (ILT2) receptor, an inhibitory receptor expressed on both innate and adaptive immune cells.
Novartis plunked down $650 million in upfront payment for BeiGene’s Tislelizumab, which is already approved for patients with classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma and metastatic urothelial carcinoma in China.
Please check out the biopharma industry coronavirus (COVID-19) stories that are trending for January 12, 2021.
On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an official alert stating that it could trigger false negatives in COVID-19 tests.
The deal adds Kymab’s lead asset KY1005 to its pipeline, a human monoclonal antibody targeting key immune system regulator OX40L.
The lessons learned from the global pandemic are expected to translate to existing and emerging therapeutic areas - particularly oncology; more efficient regulatory-industry relationships; mRNA is a word we will continue to hear a lot about; and home health care is here to stay.
The new year began with a fairly low level of clinical trial news. Here’s a look.
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