Business

GSK will acquire clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Affinivax in a deal potentially worth over $3 billion.  GSK will acquire Affinivax for an upfront payment of $2.1 billion and is offering up to $1.2 billion in potential development milestones.   Affinivax is developing a novel class of vaccines, its most advanced of which is focused on pneumococcal diseases. […]

A new £20 million fund has been launched in the Northwest of England to help support the region’s life sciences sector. The ‘GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura’ is a partnership between Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), Bruntwood SciTech and Praetura Ventures. It combines capital, expertise and resources […]

Pfizer is to acquire commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company Biohaven in a deal worth $11.6 billion. Biohaven is developing therapies for the treatment of migraine. The company’s lead product NURTEC ODT is a dual-acting migraine therapy which has been approved in the US for adult patients. The therapy has also been approved in the EU for both […]

Switzerland’s life sciences sector saw a strong year in 2021 with companies contributing to the Covid-19 pandemic and high levels of capital investments being key indicators of the sector’s strength.   This is according to the latest edition of the Swiss Biotech Report1 which was launched by the Swiss Biotech Association.   The sector saw a strong […]

DDW Deputy Editor Reece Armstrong looks at the key points of GSK’s first quarter earnings.   UK pharmaceutical company GSK has reported strong financial earnings for the first quarter of 2022.  The pharma giant reported total sales in Q1 of £9.8 billion, crediting much of that to the company’s biopharma offerings.  In a breakdown of GSK’s […]

Kizoo Technology Capital has a clear aim – to develop drugs that abate or cure age-related diseases. Lu Rahman spoke to owner, Michael Greve to find out more about this exciting work that aims to make age-related therapies affordable for everyone. Kizoo is investing €300 million in a portfolio of private science-backed biotechnology companies which […]

By Dr. Deborah Phippard, Chief Scientific Officer of Precision for Medicine and Anshul Mangal, President & General Counsel, Project Farma. In recent years the advanced therapy industry has been the most significant disruptor in medicine. Cell and gene therapies are transforming the way diseases are treated but are also aiming to cure entirely new patient populations. New applications and […]

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is to acquire biopharmaceutical company Sierra Oncology in a deal worth £1.5 billion, the company has announced.   Sierra Oncology  Sierra Oncology is a late-stage company focused on targeted therapies for the treatment of rare forms of cancer. The company’s lead asset, momelotinib, is being investigated as a treatment for myelofibrosis – a fatal […]

More than half of all scientific research is irreproducible, and more than 80% of scientific research data is being lost within 20 years. In the biomedical field alone, irreproducible research costs the industry £28 billion (US$38 billion) every year. Megan Thomas talks to Founder of Labstep Jake Schofield, about this issue.  MT: Huge amounts of scientific data […]

Evonetix is reimagining biology. Dr Vijay Narayan, Head of Physics, Dr Stuart Crosby, Head of Synthetic Chemistry, and Daniel Bygrave, Principal Software Engineer, offer insight into the technology being developed by the company and its relevance for researchers.  “I have always been intrigued by interdisciplinary environments,’ says Dr Vijay Narayan, Head of Physics, Evonetix. “This is what initially drew me to […]