News Archive

May 8 – 11, 2016

ANNOUNCING NOMINATIONS NEW BEING ACCEPTED FOR THE HEALTH DATA LIBERATORS AWARD

The Datapalooza’s Health Data Liberators Award recognizes extraordinary contributions and leadership in the liberation of health data, helping to accelerate the pace and multiply the volume of data available to innovators in order to foster the creation of products and services to improve health and health care. The Award is presented annually and will be bestowed to the recipient at 2016 Health Datapalooza in Washington, DC.

It’s hard to get people to eat right.

Healthy food can be expensive and time consuming to prepare.

Pharmaceutical group GlaxoSmithKline said its majority-owned HIV business would buy drugs at different stages of development from U.S. rival Bristol-Myers Squibb for an initial $350 million.

GSK said the acquisitions would provide ViiV Healthcare, its HIV unit in which Pfizer and Shionogi are junior partners, with new opportunities for growth.

AstraZeneca along with MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, announced a range of strategic initiatives to accelerate the delivery of innovative biologics and targeted medicines to patients in China, the company’s second largest market globally and a key growth platform.

The initiatives and investments include a strategic alliance with WuXi AppTec, a leading Chinese biologics manufacturer and contract research organisation, to produce innovative biologics locally in China. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca has the option to acquire WuXi AppTec’s biologics manufacturing capacity in Wuxi City in the next few years through an overall investment approximating $100 million. Prior to that, Wuxi AppTec remains the company’s exclusive partner for R&D manufacturing for innovative biologics in China.

On Thursday, January 14th from 4-6:30pm pm there will be an open house for the spring courses in the “Advanced Studies in Technology Transfer” program at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) Graduate School at NIH in the FAES Academic Center in NIH Building 10.

On Monday, I wrote about a new bill introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to overhaul the Food and Drug Administration. Among other things, the bill would try to speed up FDA approvals in order to boost innovation and address the current dearth of new drugs in the pipeline.

I was skeptical. In recent years, Congress has passed a number of measures to greatly shorten the amount of time that drug applications languish in the FDA bureaucracy, and that hasn’t led to a lasting boom in new drugs that are significant improvements over existing treatments. So far, cutting through red tape hasn’t ushered in a new age of innovation.

Baltimore digital health company WellDoc plans to push its flagship diabetes management tool nationally and globally following a $22 million financing round.

The Series B round, led by Samsung Ventures with returning investor Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, will give WellDoc the cash and connections needed to scale up its U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved program for adults with type 2 diabetes, called BlueStar.

MedImmune, the Gaithersburg research arm of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, is making aggressive moves to expand its footprint in China.

The company said Wednesday it plans to spend $50 million on another production facility in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai on China’s east coast. The company also announced an expansion to a key manufacturing partnership with a Chinese company, WuXi AppTec.

AstraZeneca today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the core respiratory business of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”). The deal will include the expansion of rights to roflumilast (marketed as Daliresp in the US and Daxas in other countries), the only approved oral PDE4 inhibitor for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sucampo) (Nasdaq:SCMP), a global biopharmaceutical company, today announced that Peter Greenleaf, Chief Executive Officer, has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2016. Mr. Greenleaf was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Sucampo in March 2014 and was elected to the Company’s Board at that time.

Mr. Greenleaf succeeds Dan Getman, Ph.D., who had served as Chairman since March 2014.  Dr. Getman, who has served as a director of Sucampo since 2011, will continue on the Board and will serve as Chairman of the nominating & corporate governance committee of the Board.