Category: Biotech

Therapies that entail removing immune cells from patients and engineering them to recognize and fight cancer have revolutionized the treatment of some blood cancers, but they’ve proven difficult to translate to other […]

Roche has dropped an antisense hepatitis B drug shortly after licensing a rival therapy from Dicerna Pharmaceuticals. RG6004 fell off Roche’s pipeline as part of a periodic cull that affected a handful of other experimental programs. 

Synthetic locked nucleic acid modified antisense oligonucleotide RG6004 moved into the clinic early in 2017, opening […]

A new report out of the U.K. has spotlighted the continuing opacity of clinical trial reporting, with nearly 60% of more than 4,200 studies not showing results within a year, as mandated by new rules in the U.S.

Researchers from the University of Oxford led by transparency […]

The FDA has granted a priority review to Eli Lilly’s selpercatinib, setting the stage for a third-quarter decision on whether to approve the RET inhibitor. Lilly based its filing on a phase 1/2 trial that linked selpercatinib to objective response rates (ORRs) of over 50% in heavily pretreated…

Coronaviruses can cause fatal respiratory illnesses, and they are the culprits behind several outbreaks, including the current one ravaging China. An international team of scientists is suggesting that next-generation sequencing (NGS) be used to track the 2019 […]

As Pfizer posts its full-year financials today, as usual it’s also sneaked in several dropped projects from its pipeline.

A few years back, Pfizer pretty much canned its entire neuro pipeline, but today the ax isn’t quite so red with blood. There’s a load of trials with its Merck-partnered Bavencio cancer drug that have […]

Sahm Adrangi’s Kerrisdale Capital has trained its sights on Principia Biopharma, arguing the pipeline of the Sanofi partner is “worthless.” The short seller thinks Principia’s approach to the treatment of autoimmune diseases is “misguided” and likely to lead to clinical […]

The protein alpha-synuclein is a major culprit in Parkinson’s disease because it misfolds and clumps up in the brain, causing cells that produce needed dopamine to die. In up to 10% of Parkinson’s patients, the symptoms strike before age 50, and researchers at Cedars […]

GlaxoSmithKline has licensed a tuberculosis vaccine to the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute. The deal sets the stage for a push to build on recent phase 2b data and make the vaccine available in low-income countries where TB is prevalent.

The vaccine […]

A report out this week by PwC thinks biotech could be in for a good year for deals as it sees the momentum from 2019 growing, although don’t expect many mega-deals.

In the final year of the decade, a new report out called “Global Pharma & Life Sciences deals insights Year […]

Merck KGaA spinout iOnctura has raised a €15 million ($17 million) series A round to support an early-phase solid tumor trial. The company is gearing up to generate data on PI3Kδ inhibitor…

Roche’s risdiplam has come through another late-phase test, triggering improvements in the motor skills of infants with type 1 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The clinical success comes months before the FDA is set to […]