Tag: pharmaceuticals
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Nanotech Strategy Developed for Solid Tumor Drug Delivery
Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, with colleagues from Munich Technical University and Helmholtz Center Munich, engineered a gene that can generate anti-cancer agents deep inside solid cancerous tumors. The team led by Ludwig-Maximilians pharmacologist Manfred Ogris reported its findings online yesterday in the journal Molecular Therapy (paid subscription required). Ogris (pictured right) and colleagues…
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Genomics Institute to Back Umbilical Cord Stem Cell Company
Ontario Genomics Institute in Toronto, Canada is investing in Tissue Regeneration Therapeutics, also in Toronto, a company developing a technology for medical treatments with stems cells extracted from umbilical cords. Financial aspects of the investment were not disclosed. The technology developed by Tissue Regeneration Therapeutics uses human umbilical cord perivascular cells or HUCPVCs that are extracted…
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Universities, Biotechs to Research Epilepsy Treatments
A consortium of universities and biotechnology companies in Europe are developing a new strategy for treating epilepsy, a neurological disease affecting 50 million people worldwide. The group called EPIXCHANGE includes researchers from Lund University in Sweden, University of Ferrara in Italy, and the biotech companies Bioviron in France and NsGene in Denmark. Epilepsy covers a…
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Takeda Pharma to Acquire Envoy Therapeutics
Takeda Pharmaceuticals, in Osaka, Japan, will acquire the drug discovery company Envoy Therapeutics in Jupiter, Florida for $140 million. Takeda says the merger will mean moving Envoy’s management and scientific staff to Takeda’s San Diego offices after March 2013. Envoy was founded by biophysicist and 2000 Nobel prize winner Paul Greengard, and Rockefeller University colleague…
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European Commission Approves Metabolic Disorder Gene Therapy
The biotechnology company uniQure BV in Amsterdam says the European Commission approved Glybera, its gene therapy for patients with lipoprotein lipase deficiency, a rare metabolic disorder. The approval of Glybera, says uniQure, represents the first gene therapy approved by the European Commission. Lipoprotein lipase deficiency, also called familial hyperchylomicronemia, is an inherited condition that disrupts…
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Pilot Clinical Trial Indicates Glaucoma Drug Efficacy
Results from a pilot clinical trial suggests a drug made by Aerie Pharmaceuticals of Bedminister, New Jersey is effective at treating glaucoma. The phase 2a trial tested Aerie’s candidate AR-13324 with 80 patients at 11 locations in the U.S. between March and July 2012. The patients enrolled in the double-blinded trial had open angle glaucoma,…
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Vertex to Partner with Janssen, GSK on Hepatitis C Drugs
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts will collaborate with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on clinical trials of Vertex’s VX-135 treatment candidate for hepatitis C. The trials will test VX-135 in combination with hepatitis C drugs made by Janssen and GSK. Financial details of the agreements were not disclosed.…
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Wake Forest, NanoMedica to Partner on Sequencing Technology
Physicists at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and NanoMedica Inc., a biotechnology company also in Winston-Salem, received a Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop a faster process of drug development. The $700,000 grant from National Institutes of Health is supplemented by a $160,000 award from North Carolina Biotech Center to develop the…
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Pfizer Develops Equine Vaccine from University Research
The Australian division of Pfizer Animal Health in Brisbane released today a new vaccine to prevent disease from the Hendra virus that can be fatal to horses and humans. Pfizer’s Equivac HeV is the product of research conducted at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) and licensed from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation…
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Cambridge Univ. Spin-Off Creates Drug Testing Stem Cells
A spin-off company from Cambridge University in the U.K. is commercializing a technology to convert adult stem cells into human liver cells suitable for drug testing. The technology, say its developers from Cambridge’s Anne McLaren Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine, can also test for a number of inherited liver diseases and has the potential to accelerate…