Do animals hold the key to the global organ shortage?
Scientist Wenning Qin holds up a Petri dish, carefully sloshes around the pink liquid inside, and slides it under a microscope. Some identical tiny slashes come into focus. These cells, she explains, are derived from the ear of a pig. And they may contain the future of animal to human organ transplantation.Click edit button to change this text.
Power Lunch: Reata CEO on drug that shows signs of reversing kidney damage
Reata CEO Warren Huff discusses his company’s new drug, which has shown signs it can reverse kidney damage.
Companies To Watch: Vyome Therapeutics
Transitions challenge every company, but maybe biopharmas most of all. Drug development consists of a series of big steps, each one bringing a dramatic increase in the scale of a company’s expertise, operations, and risk-taking. Vyome is reaching the cusp of an upcoming Phase 2b trial, and it faces its greatest transition so far as a small company. With roots in India but new headquarters in Princeton, NJ, Vyome must now play for much higher stakes in focusing its dermatology portfolio on the U.S. market.
Artificial Intelligence Could Beat Tumors Resistant to Immunotherapy
The French company OSE Immunotherapeutics has signed a partnership to use artificial intelligence to develop treatments for tumors that don’t respond to checkpoint inhibitor drugs.
The Rheumatologist
SM04690 is a small-molecule inhibitor of the Wnt pathway currently in clinical trials to evaluate its use managing knee osteoarthritis (OA). The treatment is an intra-articular injection being developed as a disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug (DMOAD). Preclinical data suggest this agent has a dual action mechanism, with three joint health effects: cartilage generation, slowing of cartilage breakdown and inflammation reduction. Presently, no DMOADs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Bispecific antibodies a new hot rod on the anti-cancer circuit
Next-gen bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) are on the move. The blockbuster potential of the class has galvanized biopharma, with deals and assets racing to capture the pole position as the entire field gains speed.
DalCor Keeps Faith In CETP Biomarker, Despite No Dice For Merck’s REVEAL Genetic Analysis
Hopes for a precision approach for the vast cardiovascular disease population live on – past failed studies of HDL-raising drugs and lack of evidence for genetic typing in Merck’s latest analysis of anacetrapib in REVEAL.
ACC: Merck anacetrapib reveal bodes neutral at best for DalCor’s dalcetrapib
Pfizer, Roche, Lilly and finally, Merck. One by one, they ended their CETP inhibitor programs, giving up the ghost on a once-vaunted class of cholesterol-targeting drugs thought to be a potential game-changer for heart disease. In spite of the mass exodus, little DalCor Pharmaceuticals emerged in 2015, with the Roche castoff dalcetrapib and a goal to succeed where the heavy hitters of Big Pharma had failed.
