Archive for March, 2008
American College of Cardiology Weekend Roundup
After two days of the American College of Cardiology conference in Chicago a few things to note:
- Drug eluting stents actually do work better than bare-metal stents in MI… for now. (PRNewswire)
- TAPAS study shows aspirating from PCI site improves blood flow deep in heart (PRNewswire)
- BRAVE-3 shows no need for Abciximab in addition to [...]
Pharma Layoffs: And so it begins
(Source: WSJHealthBlog)
And so it begins. Wyeth announced yesterday that it is laying off 1,200 members of its sales and marketing force, mostly from the Protonix ranks. The drug has been hit hard lately by generic competition.
I think ‘08 will be a banner year for pharma layoffs in particular, though it will be hard [...]
Pharma R&D Spending Tops $58B in 2007
(From PRNewswire via PhRMA Report)
Pharmaceutical R&D spending increased nearly $3B from 2006 to a
record $58.8B for 2007. Comparatively, only ~60 countries have a
larger nominal GDP. The report illustrates big pharma’s willingness to
dump metric buttloads of money on a failing system that produces fewer
and fewer drug candidates while at the same time laying [...]
PDUFA Dates and Black Box Warnings
Like the FDA needs more bad press. The beleaguered drug watchdog
has taken hits aplenty over the last few years for more reason that can
be counted. The etiology of which, stem mostly from the lack of
sufficient funding from congress and an increasing workload. A study
published today in the NEJM illustrates what happens when [...]
Biopharm Financing Roundup
MethylGene and Otsuka partner on a discovery deal to discover novel kinase inhibitors for eye related diseases with MethylGene receiving $2M upfront and almost another $2M in research funding over 18 months. The total value of the deal including possible regulatory milestones is $50.5M.
Avanir (AVNX) raised $40M in a public offering for cash to [...]
Pieris AG Nets 38M in Series B Financing
(PRNewswire)
Pieris AG announced today that it raised $38M USD in a series B financing round lead by OrbiMed Advisors LLC and NovoNordisk.
The funding will allow initiation of clinical development of its
VEGF-modulating cancer therapeutic, PRS-050. All existing investors
also participated in this financing round including Global Life Science Ventures, Gilde Healthcare Partners and Forbion Capital Partners.
The company [...]
Gilead Now #2 in Market Cap
Hat tip to seekingalpha
As far as market cap is concerned, Gilead (GILD) at least
fleetingly topped Amgen (AMGN) as the world’s second highest valued
biotech company. Amgen has taken some hits recently over their anemia
drug franchise and yesterday were overtaken in market capitalization
by a company with a third their revenue.
I made a long Amgen call nearly a [...]
Top Biopharma Deals Q1 ‘08
It’s a just a quarter of the way into 2008 and it is clear the both large
biotech and pharma have holes to fill in thier pipeline. Six deals have
already been inked that total over a half a billion bio-dollars each.
Below are 4 of the top deals thus far:
Genzyme/Isis ($1,900M) - Genzyme paid Isis $175M in
cash [...]
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