Shares in Valneva SE rose by as much as 32% during early trading April 30 on news that Pfizer Inc. is paying $130 million up front to in-license its Lyme disease candidate vaccine, VLA-15. Valneva could also receive a further $35 million in development milestones and $143 million in early commercial milestones, as well as tiered sales royalties starting at 19%.

Positive topline data from the phase 3 REST-ON trial evaluating FT218 (Avadel), an investigational, once-nightly formulation of sodium oxybate, showed that the treatment led to clinically meaningful improvement in patients with narcolepsy.

Another company focused on severe respiratory complications of COVID-19 is La Jolla, Calif.-based Calcimedica Inc., which started a phase IIa study with its small-molecule calcium release-activated calcium (CRAC) channel inhibitor, CM-4620-injectable emulsion (IE), in patients with severe pneumonia who are at risk for ARDS. The company received a “Study May Proceed” letter from the FDA earlier this month and the trial began April 8.

A cell-targeting sequencing method developed at Rockefeller University is being used to find drug targets for neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Nuclear enriched transcript sort sequencings (NETSseq) is a sample preparation method that uses antibodies or RNA probes to latch on to the nuclei of pre-determined cells of interest, capturing pools of them for downstream transcriptome profiling or even chromatin accessibility profiling with next-generation sequencing.

A new type of checkpoint inhibitor from an Israeli biotech company called Compugen is showing early signs of halting tumor growth in patients with advanced cancer, offering hope that more patients might one day benefit from cancer immunotherapy.

Immunomedics (IMMU) isn’t concerned the coronavirus pandemic could slow its launch of a new breast cancer treatment, an executive said Thursday, as IMMU stock rocketed on the approval.

Despite oncology being a focus of pharmaceutical R&D for decades, some cancers remain difficult to treat. Drug Target Review’s Hannah Balfour spoke with Hans Klingemann, MD, PhD, Vice President of R&D at NantKwest, a clinical stage immunotherapy company, to find out how effective treatments against traditionally treatment-refractory cancers, like pancreatic cancers and triple-negative breast cancers, can be developed.

Cue Biopharma forged a clinical collaboration with Merck to combine its lead candidate CUE-101 with Merck‘s Keytruda as a first-line treatment for HPV+ recurrent/metastatic head and neck cancer.