Spanish specialist for sea-derived synthetic oncology drugs, PharmaMar SA, has inked a licence agreement with US antibody drug conjugate (ADC) company Seattle Genetics Inc. PharmaMar will provide fully-synthetic toxic payloads.

For decades, researchers have searched without success for a strategy to prevent malaria. Now, two teams of researchers present a solution that circumvents the problem of surface antigen hypervariability of Plasmodium. Their drug candidate blocks the pathogens’ release from blood cells, resulting in prevention of the life-threatening hot stages.

In a strategic acquisition, Roche has completed its capabilities to use Big data to build new business cases in digital diagnostics solutions and personalised healthcare. The pharma major agreed to pay US$1.9bn to take over the US specialist for digital electronic medical records, Flatiron Health Inc.

Santhera Pharmaceuticals has licenced the inhaled neutrophil eleastase blocker POL6014 from Polyphor Ltd for CHF6.5m upfront and CHF121m in potential milestones.

Co-administration of an allogenic blood stem cell transplant and sorafenib cured AML patients refractive to chemotherapy and stem cell transplants alone, oncologists report in Nature Medicine.

Poxel S.A. is advancing its proof-of-concept type 2 diabetes programme imeglimin (PXL008) into Phase III studies in the US an the EU by means of a licence deal with Swiss Roivant Sciences GmbH.

Anticalin developer Pieris and Antibody-drug conjugate specialist Seattle Genetics have agreed to co-develop three bispecific cancer drugs using Seattle Genetic’s cancer targets and Pieris’ co-stimulatory agonist and anticalin platform.

Spanish biotech sector:?European investors more and more often take a look at Southern European biotech companies. Spain, in particular, is now harvesting the fruits of long-term public support started a decade ago, which stimulated the establishment of a dynamic ecosystem. Today, foreign investments are at an all-time high and start-ups find a well-prepared basis for growth.

Italfarmaco SpA’s Givinostat, a small molecule histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor in clinical testing against several forms muscular dystrophies, is also an option to treat heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a form of congestive heart failure that affects 50% of heart failure patients.

German researchers have identified a target to switch off intestinal acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), which occurs in about 50% of leukemia patients that have been given a allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT).