Biotech stocks are hoping for some sort of cut in regulations to speed up drug candidate approvals as companies focus on innovative drug advancements despite recent pricing concerns. Biotech stocks with current and recent developments in the markets include: Moleculin Biotech, Inc., Achaogen, Inc., Akorn, Inc., Organovo Holdings, Inc., and Kite Pharma, Inc.
Moleculin Biotech, Inc., a preclinical pharmaceutical company focused on the development of anti-cancer drug candidates, many of which are based on license agreements with The University of Texas System on behalf of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, announced its scientific presentation at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics. Waldemar Priebe, Ph.D., Moleculin’s founder, founding scientist, and chair of the scientific advisory board presented the abstract on November 30 at the Symposium in Munich, Germany. https://marketnewsupdates.com/news/mbrx.html.
Wally Klemp, chairman and CEO stated, “This presentation shows proof of concept data for our WP1122 portfolio, including data demonstrating increased survival of animals with human brain tumors treated with WP1122, as well as its biodistribution and pharmacokinetics. In non-optimal doses and treatment regimens, our lead inhibitor WP1122 performed equal to or better than the current market leader, cytotoxic drug temozolomide and significantly improved survival in animals treated with WP1122 in combination with temozolomide.”
The following is an overview of the presentation, titled “Latentiation of 2-deoxy-D-glucose.” No curative therapy exists for patients with high-grade malignant gliomas (GBMs). New approaches to the treatment of this disease are currently being evaluated with mixed results. One approach, that deserves to be therapeutically exploited, is targeting brain tumor metabolism. 2-Deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), a known effective inhibitor of glycolysis, has been clinically tested but results did not meet expectations due to poor drug-like characteristics and inability to achieve therapeutic concentrations of 2-DG in the brain.
Dr. Waldemar Priebe stated, “We proposed to use latentiation of 2-DG to overcome this problem by chemically modifying biologically active 2-DG to form prodrugs with increased brain uptake that will be able to liberate in vivo the parent compound 2-DG in the brain. In our approach, we synthesized a series of differentially acetylated derivatives of 2-DG. Preliminary in vivo studies in mice of selected diacetates of 2-DG demonstrated >9 fold increased levels of 2-DG in the brain when compared with levels of 2-DG after administration of equimolar amount of 2-DG itself. Ultimately, our studies focused on a single compound 3,6-di-O-acetyl-2-deoxy-D-glucose (WP1122).”
In other biotech developments and market performance of note in the sector:
Achaogen, Inc. closed up over 148 percent on Monday at $13.03 trading over 53 million shares by the market close. Achaogen, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibacterials addressing multi-drug resistant (MDR) gram-negative infections, announced that its lead product candidate, plazomicin, met the objective of non-inferiority compared to meropenem for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and achieved superiority for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) primary efficacy endpoints in the Phase 3 EPIC registration trial in patients with complicated urinary tract infections (cUTI) and acute pyelonephritis (AP).
Akorn, Inc. closed up over 8 percent on Monday at $20.21 trading over 3.8 million shares traded by the market close. Akorn, a specialty pharmaceutical company, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted a re-inspection of its Decatur, IL manufacturing facility from December 5, 2016 to December 9, 2016, with no Form 483 observations. The re-inspection was conducted to verify the implementation and effectiveness of Akorn’s responses to the observations from the June 2016 FDA inspection.
Organovo Holdings, Inc. closed up over 2 percent on Monday at $3.39 trading over 1.78 million shares by the market close. Organovo Holdings, a three-dimensional biology company focused on delivering scientific and medical breakthroughs using its 3D bioprinting technology, recently announced that chairman and chief executive officer Keith Murphy was scheduled to speak at VirtualInvestorConferences.com today (December 14) at 1:00 p.m. (EST).
Kite Pharma, Inc. closed up over 4 percent on Monday at $47.84 trading 1 million shares by the market close. Kite Pharma announced that characterizations of T cell receptor candidates which it has licensed under the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been published in the December 8, 2016 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
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Editor’s Note: MarketNewsUpdates (MNU), a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, says it is not affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein and holds no shares in any companies named in the above report. For current services performed, MNU reported in a disclaimer that it has been compensated $3,900 for news coverage of the press release issued by Moleculin Biotech, Inc.
(Source: PR Newswire)
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
