Industry News

Cytokinetics, Inc announced that it is scheduled to report fourth quarter results on Thursday, February 16, 2017 at 4:00 PM Eastern Time. Following the announcement, Cytokinetics’ senior management will host a conference call at 4:30 PM Eastern Time to discuss operational and financial results and the company’s outlook for the future.

Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.announced that it has signed a $150 million royalty agreement with HealthCare Royalty Partners (HCR). Under the terms of the agreement, Portola received $50 million at closing and may receive an additional $100 million upon U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of AndexXaTM (andexanet alfa) in exchange for a tiered, mid-single-digit royalty based on worldwide sales of the agent. The agreement is subject to a maximum total royalty payment of 195 percent of the $150 million funded by HCR, at which time the agreement would expire.

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Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Enteris BioPharma, Inc. announced that the companies have entered into a license agreement and initiated an early development agreement to leverage Enteris’ proprietary and patented oral peptide and small molecule delivery platform, Peptelligence™, to engineer an oral formulation of a peptide-based injectable therapeutic developed by Ferring.

Cytokinetics, Inc and Royalty Pharma announced that Cytokinetics has agreed to sell to Royalty Pharma a portion of the potential royalty due to Cytokinetics from Amgen on worldwide sales of omecamtiv mecarbil. Cytokinetics has also agreed to exercise its option to co-invest with Amgen in the Phase 3 development program of omecamtiv mecarbil in exchange for increased royalties from Amgen on worldwide sales of omecamtiv mecarbil outside Japan and co-promotion rights.

Zydus Cadila, a leading global healthcare provider announced that it has acquired Sentynl Therapeutics Inc., a US based specialty pharma company specialized in marketing of products in the pain management segment. The transaction will be EPS accretive. With this acquisition, Zydus makes a foray into the specialty pain market in the US valued at $ 8 billion.

uniQure N.V. announced that AMT-060,  its proprietary, investigational gene therapy in patients with severe hemophilia B, has received Breakthrough Therapy designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  This designation is based on results from the ongoing, dose-ranging Phase 1-2 study that show sustained increases in Factor IX (FIX), reductions in FIX replacement usage and a near cessation of spontaneous bleeding in patients with severe disease at up to 12 months follow-up. 

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PhytoPain Pharma Inc. (“PPP”), a subsidiary of Tetra Bio-Pharma Inc. a pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing therapeutic cannabis-based products for the treatment of pain and other medical conditions announces that it has completed its pre-IND meeting with the USA Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) for its PPP001 dried cannabis drug product.

SCIEX, a global leader in life science analytical technologies, announced its latest solution in the X-Series Quadrupole Time of Flight (QTOF) mass spectrometry (MS) platform. The newest X-Series model, the X500B QTOF System, brings simplicity, high performance and robustness for biotherapeutic analyses to one of the most compact MS system footprints on the market.

Allergan plc , a leading global pharmaceutical company,  announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the company's supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to update the label for AVYCAZ® (ceftazidime and avibactam) with clinical data from two Phase 3 trials supporting the indication to treat patients with complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI), including pyelonephritis, caused by designated susceptible Gram-negative microorganisms.

The European Commission has approved an update to the Jardiance® (empagliflozin) label to include a change to the indication statement. Jardiance® is now indicated for the treatment of adults with insufficiently controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) as an adjunct to diet and exercise.The approved product information now includes data on the reduction of risk of cardiovascular (CV) death in patients with T2D and established CV disease in addition to data on the improvement of blood sugar control.Jardiance® is the only oral diabetes treatment shown to reduce the risk of CV death in a dedicated CV outcome trial to date. Jardiance® is marketed by Boehringer Ingelheim and Eli Lilly and Company (LLY).