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AstraZeneca has risen as one of pharma’s most prolific investors in China, including a $630 million pledge last week for full rights to AbelZeta’s cell therapy for cancer.
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JPM
With the biopharma industry performing better of late, analysts, executives and other industry watchers are “cautiously optimistic”—a term heard all over the streets of San Francisco at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.
Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Merck are contributing drug ingredients as part of their deals with the White House but are keeping many of the terms of their agreements private.
Some 200 rare disease therapies are at risk of losing eligibility for a pediatric priority review voucher, a recent analysis by the Rare Disease Company Coalition shows. That could mean $4 billion in missed revenue for already cash-strapped biotechs.
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Phacilitate’s annual event dawns as cell and gene therapies reach a new tipping point: the science has hit new heights just as regulatory and government policies spark momentum and frustration.
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In a collaboration agreement announced Wednesday, Boehringer Ingelheim will gain access to Ribo’s platform to target hepatocytes with investigational siRNA therapies for nonalcoholic or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.
Over the past year, obesity treatments have become the focus of intense media attention and discussion in healthcare — with increased focus on Wegovy and Zepbound. This attention has highlighted the need to address the global obesity epidemic.
FDA
The regulator greenlit 55 new drugs last year, seven of which belonged to Pfizer, including an ulcerative colitis treatment and a migraine nasal spray—both acquired in multibillion-dollar buys.
Patients treated with Longboard Pharmaceuticals’ bexicaserin saw a 32.5% drop in the frequency of countable motor seizures relative to placebo in a Phase 1b/IIa study. The company’s shares soared 316% Tuesday on the news.
The antibody-drug conjugate market remains hot so far in 2024 with Tuesday’s collaboration and license agreement between Roche and MediLink Therapeutics to develop a next-generation ADC in oncology.
The Swiss pharma is looking to leverage Voyager Therapeutics’ capsid technology for gene therapies aimed at treating Huntington’s disease and spinal muscular atrophy.
All three companies closed out the year, which saw significant growth in mergers and acquisitions, with high-value deals that could potentially set the tone for M&A in 2024.
Biopharmas of varying sizes—including larger companies like Amgen, Gilead and Pfizer—cut employees in 2023 to stay afloat.
Eli Lilly has signed a multi-year contract with animal genomics biotech Fauna Bio to use its artificial intelligence platform to discover drug targets for obesity in a deal worth nearly half a billion dollars.
Under the companies’ agreement, a previously disclosed option exercise fee of $75 million has been reduced to $10 million and the remaining pre-option development milestone has been removed.