Chief Scientific Officer Prof Dolores Schendel appointed new Chief Executive Officer of Medigene AG
Dave Lemus appointed Chief Operating Officer of Medigene AG and Chief Executive Officer of Medigene Inc. in the United States
Martinsried/Munich, 17 December 2015. Medigene AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: MDG1) announced today that the Supervisory Board has resolved important changes and additions to the senior management team to better align the organisational structure with the strategic goals of the company in immuno-oncology and to expand Medigene’s presence in the United States.
Baltimore digital health company WellDoc plans to push its flagship diabetes management tool nationally and globally following a $22 million financing round.
The Series B round, led by Samsung Ventures with returning investor Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, will give WellDoc the cash and connections needed to scale up its U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved program for adults with type 2 diabetes, called BlueStar.
MedImmune, the Gaithersburg research arm of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, is making aggressive moves to expand its footprint in China.
The company said Wednesday it plans to spend $50 million on another production facility in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai on China’s east coast. The company also announced an expansion to a key manufacturing partnership with a Chinese company, WuXi AppTec.
AstraZeneca today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the core respiratory business of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”). The deal will include the expansion of rights to roflumilast (marketed as Daliresp in the US and Daxas in other countries), the only approved oral PDE4 inhibitor for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sucampo) (Nasdaq:SCMP), a global biopharmaceutical company, today announced that Peter Greenleaf, Chief Executive Officer, has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2016. Mr. Greenleaf was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Sucampo in March 2014 and was elected to the Company’s Board at that time.
Mr. Greenleaf succeeds Dan Getman, Ph.D., who had served as Chairman since March 2014. Dr. Getman, who has served as a director of Sucampo since 2011, will continue on the Board and will serve as Chairman of the nominating & corporate governance committee of the Board.
Amgen Inc on Monday said it had reached a deal with British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline to reacquire the sales rights to three of its products in 48 countries, including Australia as well as markets in Asia, South America and Europe.
The three Amgen drugs are the osteoporosis treatment Prolia; the related drug XGeva, used to prevent fractures in cancer that has spread to the bone, and Vectibix for advanced colorectal cancer.
Pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline said its majority-owned HIV business would buy drugs at different stages of development from U.S. rival Bristol-Myers Squibb for an initial $350 million.
GSK said the acquisitions would provide ViiV Healthcare, its HIV unit in which Pfizer and Shionogi are junior partners, with new opportunities for growth.
AstraZeneca along with MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, announced a range of strategic initiatives to accelerate the delivery of innovative biologics and targeted medicines to patients in China, the company’s second largest market globally and a key growth platform.
The initiatives and investments include a strategic alliance with WuXi AppTec, a leading Chinese biologics manufacturer and contract research organisation, to produce innovative biologics locally in China. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca has the option to acquire WuXi AppTec’s biologics manufacturing capacity in Wuxi City in the next few years through an overall investment approximating $100 million. Prior to that, Wuxi AppTec remains the company’s exclusive partner for R&D manufacturing for innovative biologics in China.
Brace Pharma Capital led a $33 million Series B funding in Navitor Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company. Other investors in the funding included Remeditex Ventures, Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures and an undisclosed individual investor. Existing investors Polaris Partners, Atlas Venture, Johnson & Johnson Innovation and SR One also participated. Vinzenz Ploerer, president and chief executive officer of Brace Pharma Capital, will join Navitor’s board.
Drs. Donald Zack and Valentin Sluch spent 30 anxious days waiting for their experiment to yield results.
They were eager to see if the retinal ganglion cells growing in their lab would turn red, indicating that they’d successfully edited the cells’ DNA. Turning the eye cells red would allow them to be sorted from other cells and potentially provide the key to research that one day could lead to a cure for blindness caused by glaucoma or multiple sclerosis.
Headquartered in Pasadena, California, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) was founded by Joel S. Marcus and Jerry M. Sudarsky in 1994. The company is structured as a REIT (real estate investment trust) and completed an initial public offering in 1997. The company is now the third-largest publicly traded office REIT in the United States and is part of the S&P 400.
ANNOUNCING NOMINATIONS NEW BEING ACCEPTED FOR THE HEALTH DATA LIBERATORS AWARD
The Datapalooza’s Health Data Liberators Award recognizes extraordinary contributions and leadership in the liberation of health data, helping to accelerate the pace and multiply the volume of data available to innovators in order to foster the creation of products and services to improve health and health care. The Award is presented annually and will be bestowed to the recipient at 2016 Health Datapalooza in Washington, DC.
On Thursday, January 14th from 4-6:30pm pm there will be an open house for the spring courses in the “Advanced Studies in Technology Transfer” program at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) Graduate School at NIH in the FAES Academic Center in NIH Building 10.
On Monday, I wrote about a new bill introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to overhaul the Food and Drug Administration. Among other things, the bill would try to speed up FDA approvals in order to boost innovation and address the current dearth of new drugs in the pipeline.
I was skeptical. In recent years, Congress has passed a number of measures to greatly shorten the amount of time that drug applications languish in the FDA bureaucracy, and that hasn’t led to a lasting boom in new drugs that are significant improvements over existing treatments. So far, cutting through red tape hasn’t ushered in a new age of innovation.
The year isn’t even over yet, but venture fund Rock Health is reporting that venture investment in digital health has equaled 2014’s record of $4.3 billion. Digital health continues to account for about 7 percent of all venture funding, the San Francisco-based organization said.
“While skeptics may use the flatness of growth to question the attractiveness of the digital health industry, it’s important to keep in perspective what an incredible feat it was for 2015 to be on track with record-breaking 2014,” Rock Health said in its year-in-review, released Monday. “The steady amount of funding should calm any concerns of a bubble.”
The MACH37 Cyber Accelerator program lasts for 90 days and is composed of startups that are cultivated from the area’s best and brightest and they are instructed on the various facets of starting and sustaining a successful business. The first session was held in September of 2013 and since then there have been five classes and 29 new cyber security companies have been launched as a result.
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