Financing for Concert Pharmaceuticals

CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Raises $37 Million in Series C Financing
CoNCERT Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced the closing of a $37 million Series C financing today. The Company intends to use the proceeds to further advance its deuterium chemistry platform and product pipeline. The financing was led by a leading public equity institutional investor and included participation [...]

Sucampo and Takeda’s Amitiza Approved for IBS-c

On a disease sexiness scale from 0-100, chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-c) are close to rounding out the bottom of that range however, they remain important medical problems. CIC accounts for roughly 6 million related outpatient visits each year and just over a quarter million hospital admissions with constipation as [...]

Financing for Nuon, Constellation and Neurologix

Nuon Therapeutics Inc. Completes $27 Million Series B Financing
The Series B funding will enable Nuon Therapeutics to advance its orally active lead compound, tranilast, through Phase II clinical trials and support the discovery and development of additional compounds. In 2007, [...]

Elixir Hoping to Cash In On Sirtuins Too After GSK / Sirtris Deal

For the first time in almost 10 months, and not surprisingly, coming on the heels of the GSK / Sirtris buyout that occurred last week, Elixir Pharmaceuticals has announced that they have been granted a patent for a class of SIRT2 regulators. I came down as pretty negative on the Sirtris deal in [...]

Astellas Pharma and CoMentis Sign $760M Alzheimer’s Deal

Astellas Pharma, Inc. and CoMentis, Inc. announced today that the companies have entered into an agreement to develop products from CoMentis’ beta-secretase inhibitor program, including the recently initiated, phase 2, lead candidate compound CTS-21166, an oral beta-secretase inhibitor for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The agreement also includes a research collaboration to develop additional beta-secretase [...]

Kindler Talks to Mike Huckman About Pfizer Woes

Good article, great interview. Kindler answers tough questions candidly with quality answers.
Check out the video and blog post here.

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Biotech/Pharma Competitive Intelligence

Introduction
A significant chunk of my job in business development entails competitive intelligence and I’ve found the lack of biotech/pharmaceutical specific guide in this area a bit distressing. In that vein, I’ve tried to compile a guide / list of services and hacks I currently use to keep up on the industry in general and [...]

GlaxoSmithKline Buys Sirtris for $720M

GSK just paid $720M (22.50/share or an 84% premium) for a company with one phase II compound that… well… wasn’t shy about publicizing itself. Take this quote from CEO Chris Westphal for instance, “the first group to have ever targeted an anti-aging gene to treat a disease of aging.” Aside from being not [...]

Blow to Biogenerics: Genzyme Can’t Scale Myozyme

(From The Boston Globe via PharmaLot)
The FDA set an extremely high bar yesterday for biosimilars when it ruled Genzyme could not get clearance to manufacture Myozyme (alglucosidase alfa) to treat Pompe disease (a rare genetic disease that inhibits the breakdown of glycogen in muscles into glucose) at the 2000L scale as opposed to the 160L [...]

Disease Briefing: Multiple Sclerosis

All this talk of MS in the last week has made your editor hungry for some MS info-video-graphic.

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Treximet… Finally!

I’ve been having migraines lately, well for the last few years. Terrible migraines. Migraines so debilitating only a combination of acutely acting medicines could even touch the pain. The problem was, up until now (finally, after a two year delay), I had to open two bottles of medicine, remove a few pills [...]

MS News: Fingolimod (FTY720) Open Label Results and Tysabri PML Data

Last night (and I doubt coincidentally) two promising therapies for MS released positive data. Novartis’s fingolimod (FTY720) in a Phase II study extension showed 68-73% of patients with multiple sclerosis remained relapse-free after three years of treatment and that 89% of patients free from active brain lesions - the injury caused by [...]

Merrimack Pharma Hires Codon Devices To Engineer Proteins

Codon Devices, Inc., (founded in 2004 and funded through series B by Alloy Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Tactics II Venture) and Merrimack Pharmaceuticals announced today that they have entered into a research, development and licensing agreement to apply [...]

Takeda Buys Millennium: Update

The market responded to the aforementioned acquisition news yesterday by penalizing Takeda 2%, even after the announcement it would also buy back a significant number of its own shares. The move comes as company fights to lessen the impact of projected revenue lost by the patent expirations of Prevacid and Actos in 2010 and [...]

Takeda Buys Millennium for $8.8 billion

Takeda, a Japanese pharmaceutical giant, purchased Millennium Pharmaceuticals this morning for $8.8B or $25.00/share which works out to be an $8.61/share, 53% premium over Millennium’s share price of $16.38 yesterday. The move by Takeda comes less than three months after a chief Japanese rival firm, Eisai, purchased US based MGI Pharma and it’s strong [...]