Business-in-Brief
Gene therapy deals, clinical trials transparency and sartan medicine reviews… what’s new for pharma in business?
Deals & acquisitions
- GlaxoSmithKline is acquiring oncology company Tesaro for $5.1 billion. Tesaro is the maker of Zejula, PARP inhibitor treatment for ovarian cancer. The company has a number of other oncology assets in its pipeline.
- Janssen Pharmaceuticals has entered into a collaboration with MeiraGTx to develop and commercialize gene therapies for the treatment of inherited retinal diseases. The two companies are also entering into a research collaboration to further develop AAV manufacturing technology, as well as clinical and commercial manufacturing supply agreements for the clinical and research programs.
Research
- In another setback in the Alzheimer’s disease field, Roche has halted two late-stage clinical trials of crenezumab after reviewing preliminary data. However, the drug will still be studied in a trial looking at healthy individuals at risk of familial Alzheimer’s disease.
- According to the annual G-FINDER report, industry funding for neglected diseases is at an all-time high, with more than $3.5 billion invested in 2017. This is mainly thanks to investments from the UK, European Commission, Germany and India.
- In the UK, the House of Commons Science and Technology is to address the issue of transparency in clinical trials, with a particular focus on universities. The performance of universities will be reviewed to ensure they are fulfilling their legal obligations to report trial data.
Manufacturing
- After an EMA review, companies that make sartan blood pressure medicines are being required to review their manufacturing processes so that they do not produce nitrosamine impurities. The EMA says that N-nitrosodimethylamine and N‑nitrosodiethylamine, classified as probable human carcinogens, have been detected in some sartan medicines.
- Cytiva and G-CON Manufacturing are collaborating to incorporate Cytiva’s modular, end-to-end cell therapy and viral vector technologies and process designs into G-CON’s proprietary cleanroom technology. The aim? To offer drug developers a readily deployable platform suitable for both early clinical stages and commercial production.
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