Life sciences briefing: Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007
(UPDATED at 6:40pm PT: See below.)
Featured companies: Nereus Phramaceuticals, KFx Medical, NeuroMed Pharmaceuticals, Adnexus Therapeutics, Masimo, Biofisica, Aegera Therapeutics, LymphoSign, InfuScience, Palmetto Infusion Services
Nereus Pharma raises $45M for ocean-derived cancer drugs — San Diego’s Nereus Pharmaceuticals, a biotech that searches for cancer drugs in marine microbes, raised $45 million in a follow-on to its fourth funding round.
The company features an all-star lineup of investors, which includes BankInvest, Roche Venture Fund, Astellas Venture Management, Boston Life Science Venture… Continue Reading
Merck buys cardio-drug maker NovaCardia for $350M
San Diego’s NovaCardia, a developer of drugs for cardiovascular disease, agreed to sell itself to Merck for $350 million.
The specialty pharmaceutical company has in-licensed two drugs from other drug makers, one to treat kidney problems in heart failure patients and another for atrial fibrillation. The heart-failure drug, KW-3902, should enter a late-stage trial this year; the atrial-fibrillation drug, meanwhile, is slated to enter mid-stage trials this year.
Actually, I take that back — KW-3902… Continue Reading
Roundup: Biogenerics bill in limbo, clashing data on health IT benefits, the RNAi boom, and more
House-Senate confrontation set over biogenerics – Late last month, a key group of senators reached agreement on legislative provisions that would authorize copycat versions of biotech drugs, which are typically complex proteins manufactured by genetically engineered cells (see details here and here). These provisions would finally put biotech drugs — which don’t face cut-rate competition once their key patents expire — on a par with traditional pharmaceuticals, and have been a long time in coming. They’re… Continue Reading
Reader feedback: Cheap drugs for poor nations, the art of the drug deal
I’m at work on a longer post that hasn’t yet come together, so I thought I’d pull an old dodge favored by daily newspaper columnists and respond to some reader comments instead. Fortunately for me, both comments left here in the past day or so have been thought-provoking — maybe there’s hope for the Internet after all.
With respect to the tussle over patents and drug pricing in Thailand, Gal Josefsberg wrote:
I’m not sure how they expect… Continue Reading
Codexis, a biocatalyst research company, signs “multimillion” dollar deal with Merck
Codexis, a biocatalyst research company based in Redwood City, Ca., has signed a significant licensing deal with Merck & Co.
See the statement here. The terms weren’t disclosed, but the company tells VentureWire it is in the multimillions of dollars (sub required).