Prometheus Biosciences on Tuesday said it has appointed Thierry Dervieux as chief development officer, diagnostics, and medical laboratory director. The San Diego-based biotech, created this summer through the acquisition of Prometheus Laboratories by Precision IBD, is working to create new drugs and companion diagnostics for people with gastroenterology disorders and autoimmune diseases. Dervieux was most […]

Neil Bodick, chief scientific officer of Flexion Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FLXN), will retire on Jan. 3. After co-founding the company in 2007, Bodick served as its chief medical officer. He became chief scientific officer in 2017 following FDA approval of the company’s extended-release formulation of triamcinolone acetonide (Zilretta), a treatment for knee pain. After retiring, Flexion […]

Synthorx is working to design new cytokine therapies for cancer using an “extended” genetic alphabet that could help avoid the shortcomings associated with earlier versions. Now French biopharma Sanofi has struck a deal to add the startup to its oncology business in a transaction that values the company at about $2.5 billion. The move is […]

The name of the experimental drug was heard so frequently in hotel hallways at the conference that it sounded like an incantation: aducanumab, aducanumab, aducanumab. Regardless of the eventual FDA verdict on Biogen’s once-bagged, now-revived anti-amyloid antibody, data from clinical trials of the treatment have inarguably altered the course of drug discovery and development for […]

Biogen revealed detailed results from its Alzheimer’s trial to a jam-packed room of eager conference attendees this week—and while some described it as a major advance in the field, others were less convinced. Samantha Budd Haeberlein, Biogen’s vice president of clinical development, took the stage Thursday morning in San Diego at Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s […]

Two venture-backed startups that have developed technologies intended to speed up the drug discovery and development process are combining those tools in a bid to achieve their goals together. San Francisco-based Atomwise has developed deep learning techniques for use in structure-based small molecule drug discovery. Since 2012 it has raised more than $50 million to […]

Neurocrine Biosciences is paying $30 million cash and taking a $20 million equity stake in Xenon Pharmaceuticals to license a clinical-stage epilepsy drug and collaborate on other potential treatments for the seizure-causing brain disorder. The Xenon (NASDAQ: XENE) deal is the second one San Diego-based Neurocrine has struck this year in a bid to expand […]

Reforms to a US national security regulation are putting off foreign investors and driving down VC investment in the biotech space by as much as 20 percent, says BIO’s David Thomas. In August 2018, Congress passed the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) as part of the Fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. The […]

AstraZeneca has turned to Novoheart’s “human heart-in-a-jar” technology to create a preclinical model that mimics a form of heart failure for which there is no effective therapy available. Based on Novoheart’s human ventricular cardiac organoid chamber (hvCOC) technology, the companies are aiming to develop a new in vitro model that can reproduce the characteristics of […]

La Jolla Pharmaceutical is turning its focus to its lone FDA-approved product and another one in the pipeline after an experimental drug for a rare blood disease failed a late-stage study. On Monday, La Jolla Pharma (NASDAQ: LJPC) said it was halting a clinical trial testing LJPC-401, its drug candidate for iron overload in patients […]

The FDA on Monday approved a Global Blood Therapeutics treatment for sickle cell disease, three months before the agency’s decision was expected. Regulators evaluated the drug, voxelotor (Oxbryta), under a pathway that allows for a speedier review using less evidence than is typically required. This pathway is reserved for drugs that address an unmet medical […]

Kymera Therapeutics’ new leader comes from within. Nello Mainolfi, the company’s co-founder, president, and chief scientific officer, has been promoted to president and CEO. Mainolfi’s experience includes positions at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Atlas Venture, and Raze Therapeutics. He is succeeding former Kymera CEO Laurent Audoly, who announced in July that he would […]