No exception for Agennix as sepsis claims another hopeful victim - talactoferrin
03 February 2012

Shares of Agennix succumbed to their biggest percentage fall in more than two years in Frankfurt trading upon an announcement that it was halting the Phase II/III OASIS trial of its oral...

Ipsen's stock hit by triple whammy of charges
03 February 2012

French pharma company Ipsen saw its share price fall by 5.6% to €21.70 yesterday after it said that it was likely to have to report impairment charges of €150-180 million for 2011, reflecting...

Once-daily Janumet finally gets US FDA OK, boosting Merck's diabetes franchise
03 February 2012

Merck & Co 's once-daily combination diabetes treatment Janumet XR has now received US approval a year after the acceptance of the NDA and following a complete response letter last summer. The...

StemCells gets FDA nod for dry AMD trial using neural stem cells
03 February 2012

Cell therapy specialist StemCells has received authorisation from the US FDA to start a Phase I/II trial of its purified human neural stem cells (HuCNS-SC) for dry age-related macular degeneration,...

AB Science jumps as masitinib outperforms in Phase II trial
03 February 2012

Shares in French biotech firm AB Science increase shot up by as much as 72% on 2 February on Phase II data showing its investigational targeted anticancer compound masitinib was more effective and...

Italy asked to fully implement EU medicines law to support generic drug competition
03 February 2012

The European Commission has given Italy two months to fully implement the provisions of the EU medicines legislation on marketing authorisation procedures for generic drugs. Implementation of the...

EUSA licenses from Alize's L-asparaginase to complement Erwinaze for ALL
03 February 2012

EUSA Pharma, a private equity backed specialty pharmaceutical company focused on oncology, has acquired the exclusive worldwide development and commercialisation rights to a new L-asparaginase...

Dynavax expands target indication for hep B vaccine
03 February 2012

Dynavax Technologies is to change its planned indication for approval for its novel hepatitis B vaccine Heplisav following a pre-BLA meeting with the US FDA . It will file the product first for...

Fermenta readies for more sunshine; plans multi-forked growth for vitamin D3
03 February 2012

Fermenta Biotech, the only Indian manufacturer of vitamin D3, has doubled production capacity and expects to raise that further as the growing recognition and understanding of the nutritional and...

Merck Serono taps Threshold for Ph III cancer drug
03 February 2012

Merck KGaA has paid €19 million ($25 million) up front to access a small-molecule drug targeting tumour hypoxia from Threshold Pharmaceuticals of South San Francisco, California. The compound,...

Stockwatch: A slimmer AstraZeneca starts to look tasty
03 February 2012

The headline number when AstraZeneca announced its full-year 2011 results on February 2 was not the sales or earnings numbers, but the 7,300 further job losses from R&D, sales and marketing, and...

EMA lays out drug safety priorities for 2012
03 February 2012

Priorities for the European Medicines Agency in the drug safety area this year include a new urgent referral procedure, guidance on post-authorisation efficacy studies, and more effective ways of...

Nycomed helps keep Takeda's head above water but deal costs hit profits
03 February 2012

Takeda 's first financial figures since the completion of the Nycomed acquisition show that the deal mainly helped Asia's largest pharmaceutical company weather the impact of the strong yen and...

Sangamo receives $13m upfront in Shire haemophilia deal
02 February 2012

Shire has signed a collaboration and licence agreement with Sangamo BioSciences to develop therapeutics for haemophilia and other monogenic diseases based on Sangamo's zinc finger DNA-binding protein...

Impax licenses US Zomig rights from AstraZeneca
02 February 2012

Impax Pharmaceuticals - the branded products business unit of Impax Laboratories - has licensed from AstraZeneca the exclusive US rights to the migraine treatment, Zomig (zolmitriptan), in its...