Ex-Novartis Oncology CEO Liz Barrett has joined UroGen Pharma. Barrett is taking over as CEO of the uro-oncology specialist at a time when it is working on a rolling NDA that could lead to its first drug approval. READ FULL ARTICLERead more
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With Gilead’s CEO on the way out and revenues tumbling, the company needs a leader who can pump up cancer sales. And it may have found just that in the ranks of the world’s biggest cancer drug maker. READ FULL ARTICLERead more
Just one day after Novartis laid out plans for its long-expected spinoff of its eye unit Alcon, the Swiss pharma giant found itself fending off a rumor that it also intends to wave goodbye to its generics business, Sandoz. READ FULL ARTICLERead more
Moderna has raised round after private round, including a $500 million series G in February, which brought its total fundraising north of $2 billion. Shortly after, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company grabbed another $125 million in preferred equity as it expanded a cancer vaccine partnership with Merck.
Late Tuesday, after a fifth buyout offer from Takeda, Shire said the Japanese drugmaker had finally landed on a proposal worth recommending to shareholders. It’s a cash-and-stock bid now worth $64 billion or so, about $4 billion more than its first offer. READ FULL ARTICLERead more
Gilead Sciences is all set for its next big launch. On Wednesday, a day after the company reported a disappointing hepatitis C sales outlook, the drugmaker got a needed boost with the FDA’s approval for HIV combo drug Biktarvy.
Bristol-Myers Squibb finally got its win in first-line lung cancer—and it’s a success that not only helps confirm one immunotherapy combo approach that has been in doubt, but puts forward a diagnostic biomarker that could apply to other cancer types.
One analyst isn’t sure Pfizer can afford to be behind in both immuno-oncology and Alzheimer’s. And while his peers have suggested bulking up in I-O to solve that issue, he has a different idea. BMO’s Alex Arfaei sees “strong strategic rationale” for a merger between Pfizer and neuro specialist Bioegen, he wrote in aRead more
The FDA has approved Kite’s CAR-T, axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel), about six weeks earlier than expected. Now dubbed Yescarta, the drug is cleared to treat adults with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma, including aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, who have failed two or more traditional treatments.
A look at the prospectus for the merger tells an instructive tale of how Kite CEO Arie Belldegrun turned a single bid into a huge payday by capitalizing not only on his company’s valuable innovation in the red-hot field of immuno-oncology, but also on Gilead’s desperate need to make a game-changing deal.
