Eisai says it is creating a research facility for ‘genetics-guided dementia discovery’ in the US and joining a Japanese industry-academia-government collaboration aimed at developing nucleic acid-based drugs.
Microbiome start-up will receive up to €454 million in upfront and milestone payments
UK-based Microbiotica will collaborate with Roche-owned biotechnology group Genentech in the hunt for new microbiome-based therapeutics and biomarkers for its inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) pipeline.
AveXis – a Novartis company – has added a manufacturing facility in North Carolina to its site network, where it will make investigational therapies for neurological genetic diseases.
In a move aimed to bolster its immuno-oncology program, Eli Lilly and Company has acquired Armo BioSciences for $50 per share, or approximately $1.6bn.
KBI will provide services to ReForm to further develop and validate its biologic formulation platform and in turn, will gain access to ReForm’s proprietary excipient technologies.
“We need Big Pharma and we are getting Big Pharma,” says Dyadic
Dyadic International says a string of deals shows biopharma is beginning to embrace its low-cost and high-yielding – yet commercially unproven – fungus-based expression platform.
The traditionally small molecule firm was ‘late to the biologics game’, but Sanofi says a mixture of external partnerships and mergers are helping shift focus.
Egg adaptation is the biggest culprit in this year’s poor flu vaccine efficacy says Novavax, a firm developing a product based on recombinant protein nanoparticles.
A warning letter at manufacturing partner Celltrion could delay approvals of the potential migraine prevention monoclonal antibody fremanezumab and two biosimilar candidates, says Teva.
GigaGen has relocated laboratory and office space in San Francisco to boost development of antibody therapeutics for patients with immune dysregulation.
Novo Nordisk has called on the board of directors at Ablynx to engage in negotiations after the antibody-fragment tech firm rejected its €2.6bn ($3.1bn) acquisition offer.
Teva Pharmaceuticals Australia has selected Berkeley Lights’ biological workflow platform to develop therapeutic antibodies at its R&D site in New South Wales.
GSK will look to optimise its induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) differentiation processes through collaboration with high throughput tech firm Plasticell.
OncoQR says its two-part therapeutic vaccines help the immune system to attack cancerous cells more effectively and with fewer side effects than conventional immunotherapies.
Campaigning group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) picketed a conference in Boston on Tuesday to protest the use of animals in drug research and development.
ChromaTan will develop an integrated and continuous downstream purification platform through provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act to support manufacturing initiatives.
A shortage in expertise is causing bottlenecks in the biomanufacturing space with around half of drugmakers struggling to fill processing positions, an industry report finds.
Novartis has scaled up manufacturing of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) monoclonal antibody RTH258 ahead of a potential regulatory submission next year.
Samsung Biologics wants Big Pharma to up biomanufacturing outsourcing and says lessons learned from the semiconductor industry will give it the advantage in the CMO space.
Shire will consolidate both R&D and biomanufacturing facilities in Massachusetts to establish a rare diseases hub in Cambridge and a ‘Technology Center of Excellence’ in Lexington.
CEO Ken Frazier has told investors investments and partnerships, such as collaboration with messenger RNA firm Moderna Therapeutics, have bolstered Merck & Co.’s vaccine division.
Its new Singapore single-use plant is a fraction of the size of a conventional commercial facility but next-generation biomanufacturing at Amgen points to even smaller, more integrated sites.
Novartis will add around 350 Swiss jobs to support its innovative biologics pipeline as it looks to cut 500 more “traditional” development and manufacturing roles.
A second single-use production line could offer commercial-scale capacity for bispecific antibodies but Glenmark says it would need to scale-up further to support more traditional biologics.
Vaxart says its tablet delivery platform has simplified vaccine production so significantly it may bring manufacturing currently contracted to Lonza back in-house.
The Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line is not the future for biomanufacturing says Biogen, which will publish results from a study of alternative hosts later this year.
