Roche has reported the failure of its IL-6R antagonist tocilizumab in patients with COVID-19 putting the efficacy of IL-6 inhibition at question.
Italian start-up Enthera Pharmaceuticals has raised €28m to advance restorative therapy for type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease.
Oncolytic viruses, viral vectors for gene therapy and viral-vectored prophylactic vaccines, are new, innovative, and already successful approaches for the treatment of severe diseases. The production of these viruses requires extensive experience and specially-designed GMP clean rooms. Vibalogics offers both.
Swiss Polyphor AG has strengthened its financial flexibility with an equity-linked financing.
According to current information, the European Research Framework Programme "Horizon Europe" is likely to be among the indirect victims of the Corona pandemic: A large part of the funds earmarked will now go to the € 750 billion rescue fund.
As the process determines the product, product characteristics of biological drugs need to be analysed thoroughly right from the beginning of the drug development process. Early understanding of structure-function relationships, aggregation, microheterogenicity, and glycosylation, and more, helps minimise development risks.
Germany’s Evotec SE and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund have acquired equal minority stakes in Quantro Therapeutics GmbH, a recently established research-based biotech company based in Vienna. Evotec also entered into a comprehensive partnership with the Austrian start-up, that strives to discover and develop novel therapeutics interfering with disease-causing transcriptional programmes in cancer and other diseases. The Germans will provide hit identification services for Quantro’s proprietary anti-tumour projects.
A biosimilar is a copy version of an approved, original biological medice whose patent protection has expired. The development strategies for biosimilar product and a new biological entity (NBE) differ in many ways.
Viennese APEIRON Biologics AG raised €17.5m to expand ongoing Phase II trials of its
coronavirus-specific drug candidate APN01 in Europe to the US and Russia. The recombinant angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (rhACE2) mimics the receptor on the human cells that coronaviruses are using to infect these cell. Preclinical and clinical data demonstrate that APN01 is well-tolerated and can stop the overshooting host immune responses that are triggered by virus proliferation.
In a Public England Health study, Siemens Healthineers’ COV2T antibody test was the only assay found to meet both sensitivity and specificity requirements of the MHRA.