News and Trends 6 Oct 2016 NASH Maverick continues Rampage with €34M Cash Injection Genfit just added €34M to its cash pile through private placement to bankroll the development of its succeeding lead candidate, Elafibranor. Genfit has had a good year. Earlier this year, the company enrolled its first patient in Phase III clinical trails for Non-Alcoholic Stato-Hepatitis (NASH), and last month, it launched a new non-invasive diagnostic program. It’s […] October 6, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 6 Oct 2016 A new Immuno-Oncology biotech’s Small Molecule hits the Clinic Since we interviewed Karus Therapeutics last year, the company has come quite a way! The Oxford-based biotech has just sent its first drug to the clinic. We first met Karus Therapeutics a year ago to talk about their small molecule therapies for cancer and inflammatory disease. The company has entered the immuno-oncology fray and is developing a […] October 6, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 4 Oct 2016 CRISPR will Win the Nobel Prize, but When? Not this year… Nobel Prize week has kicked off with the announcement of Physiology and Medicine recipient: it wasn’t the CRISPR crowd, but Yoshinori Ohsumi for his work on autophagy. As Derek Lowe puts it, CRISPR “is absolutely, positively going to win a Nobel; the only question is when.” Well, it didn’t manage last year, nor this year. […] October 4, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 4 Oct 2016 A Secretive new Oncology Biotech has made a Dramatic Debut Carrick Therapeutics has burst onto the oncology scene with a massive round of fundraising, reeling in almost €100M to become Europe’s cancer leader. Since its foundation last year, oncology upstart Carrick Therapeutics has mostly stayed off the radar. That changed yesterday, when it announced a splashy fundraising round of €85M ($95M) to propel it to the top of […] October 4, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 29 Sep 2016 Interview: This Biotech Could Have the First HIV Cure on the Market InnaVirVax is one of the most advanced companies in the race to develop an HIV cure. At the SACHS Conference in Basel, we had the opportunity to pick the brain of the CEO, Joël Crouzet, about his company’s progress. Last week, we reviewed progress in biotech towards an HIV cure, which could hit the market […] September 29, 2016 - 1 minutemin - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 29 Sep 2016 Titans in Gene Therapy and TCRs make a Massive Deal Medigene has licensed a few candidates from its TCR platform to one of the Boston ‘it’ biotechs in a deal totaling around €1B. By partnering with bluebird bio, Medigene is reestablishing itself as a leader in immuno-oncology. Founded over 20 years ago, Medigene has risen to the top of the European biotech scene with a […] September 29, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 28 Sep 2016 Little Biotechs manoeuvre to outfox Big Pharma in Immuno-Oncology Giants like BMS and GSK have been throwing all the money they can at developing immuno-oncological treatments. In twin deals, four smaller companies are forging new paths to cure cancer with the human immune response. A pair of agreements among immuno-oncology biotechs have been made in attempts to outflank big pharma competition. In Scandinavia, Orion will fund […] September 28, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 28 Sep 2016 ITW: Prexton Therapeutics CEO explains Development of new Parkinson’s Drug For our first interview at the SACHS Conference in Basel yesterday, I met with François Conquet, founder and CEO of Prexton Therapeutics. His company’s treatment for Parkinson’s Disease just passed Phase I with flying colors. Prexton Therapeutics, based in Switzerland, has been focused on discovering new small molecules to treat Parkinson’s, and one of them, an mGluR4 positive […] September 28, 2016 - 1 minutemin - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 27 Sep 2016 Another “Almost” against Alzheimers: Lundbeck’s Phase III Flop Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting 15M people across the world. With the most recent failure of idalopirdine, a cure will remain elusive for now. As Derek Lowe observes, “Alzheimers therapies have, for the most part, been a cliff over which people push bales of money.” Unfortunately, the late-stage failure of […] September 27, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 26 Sep 2016 It’s Biotech Week! What’s Up in Europe? The annual celebration of biotech has started! From today through this Sunday, October 2nd, a continent-wide festival, Biotech Week, is happening as part of a larger global affair. Check out the event program and Invest Europe’s infographic on what’s up in Europe! EuropaBio has kicked off the European instalment of global Biotech Week, a week-long series […] September 26, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 26 Sep 2016 UPDATE: AC Immune rakes in €52.5M IPO for assault on Alzheimers It’s not the $700M headlines imply, but AC Immune is winding up to make a splashy IPO of €52.5M to establish itself in the Alzheimer’s Disease space. You might have read about AC Immune‘s ‘$700M IPO’ and thought, “gee, that can’t be right – that sum is roughly half of the total from all European companies […] September 26, 2016 - 2 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 26 Sep 2016 Terrible Turing hasn’t given up on Toxoplasmosis (or its Karma) The biopharmaceutical company’s Swiss division just published computational studies aiming to improve Daraprim, after its former CEO, Martin Shkreli, attempted to justify the scandalous 5000% price hike as a boost for its R&D. A little over a year ago, Martin Shkreli, founder and then-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, hiked the price of a common medication for toxoplasmosis by […] September 26, 2016 - 3 minutesmins - By Evelyn Warner Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email