- November 15, 2018
Arena bags big deal with United for PAH drug ralinepag
Arena’s run of positive news continues, with a massive $800 million upfront licensing deal with United Therapeutics for its pulmonary arterial hypertension drug ralinepag. The global deal, which also includes $400 million in milestones and double-digit royalties, comes on the heels of well-regarded phase 2 data with the oral prostacyclin receptor agonist in PAH that caused Arena’s shares to soar when it was released last year.
- November 15, 2018
Could Pot Help Solve The Opioid Crisis?
A $238,000 federal study will follow more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients in New York over the next two years to see if their opioid use drops. Scott Jordan never thought weed would help him kick the painkillers he took for a bad back. “I smoked pot in high school,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t really believe medical marijuana was going to help me.”
- November 15, 2018
Arena Pharma soars on deal with United Therapeutics for hypertension drug
Shares of Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc jumped nearly 30 percent after the drug developer sold rights to develop and sell its hypertension treatment to United Therapeutics Corp, fetching it $800 million in an upfront payment. Arena Pharma said the money will help it prepare for the eventual launch of its bowel disorder drugs.
- November 15, 2018
United Therapeutics pays $800M-plus to grab Arena’s PhIII PAH drug
United Therapeutics $UTHR is paying an $800 million cash upfront in a big bet to stay among the leaders in pulmonary arterial hypertension, grabbing rights to Arena Pharmaceuticals’ ralinepag in the deal. And the executive crew is willing to add hundreds of millions more in milestones if they can stay on track through to an approval and commercialization.
- November 12, 2018
Quantum Genomics’ brain-targeting blood pressure drug meets phase 2b endpoints
Quantum Genomics’ blood pressure drug firibastat, an inhibitor that targets aminopeptidase A in the brain, met its primary endpoint in a phase 2b study—which the company says paves the way for a wider phase 3 trial in more resistant hypertension.
- November 9, 2018
Wnt is back in drugmakers’ sights, but is it druggable?
See author Cormac Sheridan’s discussion of the biotech industry members developing therapeutics based on targeting the Wnt pathway in this issue of Nature Biotech. Included in the report is Samumed, a company developing a Wnt-targeted therapy for the treatment of Osteoarthritis and other prevalent diseases.
- November 7, 2018
Clinical Challenges: Can OA Be Stopped?
A small-molecule intra-articular Wnt pathway inhibitor, SM04690, is being developed and the results of a phase IIb trial were presented at the ACR meeting by Yusuf Yazici, MD, of NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City and Samumed, LLC, in San Diego.
