Roche’s R&D is moving on up. The pharma giant has opened two new high-rises in Basel, Switzerland, according to a Sept. 10 release. The facility is named the Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) Center and houses about 1,000 state-of-the-art laboratory and office workplaces.
Just a few short weeks after winning an FDA Fast Track tag for its investigational BTK degrader in certain blood cancers, BeiGene has been accused of trade secrets theft by its old oncology rival AbbVie.
BridgeBio Pharma is slashing its gene therapy budget and pulling back from the modality after seeing the results of a phase 1/2 clinical trial. CEO Neil Kumar, Ph.D., said the data “are not yet transformational,” driving BridgeBio to shift its focus to other drug candidates and ways to treat disease.
SpectraWAVE has raised $50 million to support its approach to imaging the insides of clogged, plaque-filled blood vessels.
After first adding electrocardiogram support to its smartwatch nearly six years ago (!), Apple is continuing to add health features to its wearables. This week, it raised the curtain on plans to add sleep apnea detection to its Apple Watch as well as to bring long-anticipated over-the-counter hearing aid tech to its latest premium AirPods.
Carisma Therapeutics has been working for years to develop cell therapies using macrophages, immune cells that are better at attacking solid tumors than the T cells that currently dominate the industry. In a partnership with Moderna, now expanded to two undisclosed autoimmune targets, the biotech hopes to seriously simplify cell therapy by bypassing the need to culture patient cells out of the body.
On the heels of disappointing low-dose data results, Zealand Pharma is back with separate findings for its GLP-1/GLP-2 receptor dual agonist that have emboldened the biotech to push the candidate into phase 2b development.
Withings has received a clearance from the FDA for what it describes as the first device that can help diagnose a person with obstructive sleep apnea without the need for any wearable sensors, wires, masks or straps.
GSK’s attempt to develop the first vaccine for herpes simplex virus (HSV) has ended in failure, leaving the race open for the likes of Moderna and BioNTech.
Genesis Therapeutics’ shiny AI drug discovery platform GEMS is catching on, having now caught the eye of Gilead Sciences.
Weekly Market Review – December 21, 2024
Medtronic appoints new chief medical officer for digital surgery and robotics
Neurocrine’s bid to save schizophrenia prospect fails
FDA greenlights over-the-counter hearing aid features for Apple’s AirPods
Oncternal folds all clinical trials after lackluster data drop, patient death
Zenas, MBX and Bicara all head to Nasdaq in hot day for biotech IPOs
FDA pushed to be more open, collaborative to accelerate rare disease R&D
In wake of Q2 revenue drop, Charles River cuts 3% of workforce
Inflammatix collects $57M as it awaits FDA review of infectious disease test
Sanofi’s $80M bet on Fulcrum’s dystrophy drug ends in phase 3 failure after 4 months
