Drug Discovery

Kiadis raises €23.4m to develop immunotherapy for GVHD

Kiadis Pharma has raised €23.4m of funding in a private placement of 2.6 million new shares, for developing a T-cell immunotherapy product to reduce Graft versus Host Disease (GVHD) in hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT).

Biogen to acquire Pfizer’s schizophrenia drug for up to $590m

Biogen has agreed to buy Pfizer's investigational schizophrenia drug, PF-04958242, in a deal worth about $590m.

Covance establishes new global unit for biologic drug development

LabCorp's Covance Drug Development business has established a global immunology and immunotoxicology (I&I) unit to focus on the development of biologic drugs.

Evotec, Sanofi in talks over infectious disease research agreement

Evotec and Sanofi are in exclusive negotiations to create an infectious disease open innovation research and development (R&D) platform through a new open innovation platform near Lyon in France.

Merck, Eisai enter into $5.76bn oncology alliance

Merck has formed an oncology collaboration with Eisai to jointly develop and commercialize the latter's Lenvima cancer treatment both as a monotherapy as well as in combination with its anti-PD-1 therapy, Keytruda, for various types of cancer.

JW Therapeutics secures $90m in new funding

Clinical stage biopharmaceutical firm JW Therapeutics has secured $90m Series A financing from a consortium led by Temasek, Sequoia Capital China, and YuanMing Capital.

Roivant Sciences secures rights to develop Ligand’s glucagon receptor antagonist

Ligand Pharmaceuticals has signed a license agreement granting Roivant Sciences exclusive global rights to develop and commercialize its LGD-6972 glucagon receptor antagonist (GRA).

Caladrius acquires license to CD34+ cell therapy program from Shire

Caladrius Biosciences has acquired an exclusive worldwide license to data from Shire’s late stage CD34+ cell therapy program for the treatment of chronic myocardial ischemia targeting refractory angina.

Research reveals bacteria could be programmed to produce drugs

Research into synthetic biology from the Universities of Warwick and Surrey has revealed that bacteria could be programmed to produce drugs.