CureVac's first-gen COVID-19 vaccine misses the mark with 47% efficacy, as share price halves in after-hours trading Biogen's $300M bet on Alzheimer's tau drug snapped up from Bristol Myers flames out in phase 2 Diversity initiatives pick up across biotech industry, but women, people of color still lack representation Sponsored: Inside Track: Behind the Scenes of a Major Biotech SPAC Apollo Therapeutics to go 'full throttle' with $145M raise after 5 years under the radar Lilly helps Circle round up $66M for intractable target R&D After Repare IPO success, Amplitude goes all in on Canadian life sciences sector with CA$200M fund LENZ Therapeutics gets fresh set of eyes with $47M funding to bring eyedrop to market Supreme Court preserves ACA in 7-2 ruling that latest challenge doesn't have standing While mRNA saved the COVID-19 day, GSK and Sanofi vaccines likely safe beyond pandemic: analysts Warp Speed initiative sent COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials into hyperdrive, new research shows Targeting 'enabler cells' to stop the spread of triple-negative breast cancer Mayo Clinic, nference AI analysis finds no real-world link among COVID-19 vaccines and brain blood clots Targeting treatment-resistant BRCA-mutated tumors via the newly discovered POLQ pathway Featured Story | By Kyle LaHucik,Noah Higgins-Dunn German biopharmaceutical CureVac said its first-generation COVID-19 vaccine, CVnCoV, showed less than 50% efficacy against any severity of the disease. read more |
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Top Stories By Nick Paul Taylor A phase 2 trial of Biogen’s anti-tau antibody gosuranemab in Alzheimer’s disease patients has missed its primary endpoint, prompting the biotech to terminate the study and stop clinical development of the candidate. Biogen paid $300 million upfront to license the drug from Bristol Myers Squibb. read more By Annalee Armstrong The good news is that the biotech industry is trying to improve diversity and inclusion. The bad news is that the measures do not yet seem to have moved the needle on getting women into the C-suite and people of color into any level at companies. Seven in 10 biotechs now list diversity and inclusion in their value statements or as a priority, according to a new report from BIO. read more Sponsored by: RBC Capital Markets Take a closer look at the SPAC phenomenon with Dr. David Hung, Founder and CEO of Nuvation Bio and Michelle Doig, Omega Funds Partner and President of its Omega Alpha SPAC. read more By Amirah Al Idrus The brainchild of three top U.K. universities and three pharma giants, Apollo Therapeutics made a splash when it debuted in early 2016. Then, crickets. In the five years since, the company has been building a portfolio of more than 15 programs and now will advance those toward the clinic with $145 million in new funding. read more By Nick Paul Taylor Circle Pharma has raised $66 million to take cyclin-targeted programs toward clinical development. The Eli Lilly-backed series C round sets Circle up to build on its years of research into cell-permeable macrocyclic peptide therapeutics with the potential to hit previously undruggable targets. read more By Kyle LaHucik Amplitude Venture Capital constructed a solid track record over the past year and a half, helping lay the groundwork for Repare Therapeutics to go public, and now the Canadian investment firm is doubling down. Amplitude closed its oversubscribed $200 million Canadian dollars ($163 million) precision medicine fund Thursday to continue investing in the Canadian life sciences sector, a space that made a big splash last year with three of the largest biotech IPOs in the country’s history. read more By Kyle LaHucik LENZ Therapeutics re-emerged Thursday after saying goodbye to the name Presbyopia Therapies. The company also announced a new CEO and a fresh start with $47 million in funding to bring its aceclidine eye drop for improving near vision to market with an FDA submission. read more By Robert King The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to uphold the ACA after striking down a challenge from a collection of red states that argued the individual mandate was unconstitutional and the rest of the law should be struck down with it. read more By Noah Higgins-Dunn Although the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have shown "astonishing" efficacy against COVID-19, the novel technology is "not a panacea" for other diseases, Jefferies analysts said in a note. That's good news for other vaccine developers, namely Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, they argue. read more By Kyle LaHucik When the U.S. formed Operation Warp Speed toward the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, drug developers, clinical research organizations and other players felt the weight behind the initiative’s urgent name. The pandemic forced CROs like IQVIA to rethink and boost resources, because the “clear traditional timelines would not be sufficient” to get COVID-19 vaccines to the public quickly, the company said in a new report. read more By Angus Liu Triple-negative breast cancer is aggressive and linked to worse prognoses than other types of the disease. Now, a research team led by scientists at Georgetown University Medical Center has identified a small subset of early breast cancer cells that drives the invasive spread to other parts of the body. read more By Andrea Park The study’s results were published not long after the FDA paused and unpaused the use of J&J's vaccine, amid reports of at least eight cases of rare brain blood clots, including one woman who died from the condition. read more By Arlene Weintraub PARP inhibitors have been game-changing for some patients whose tumors have mutations in the BRCA gene, but those cancers invariably become resistant to the drugs. Now two separate research teams are exploiting a new drug target to treat patients with drug-resistant, BRCA-mutated cancers. read more | | LabConnect is the leader in innovative central laboratory services for cell and gene therapies. Far more than typical central laboratory support, only LabConnect offers comprehensive, specialized services customizable to meet the unique needs of your complex clinical trials. Connect with us today. |
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