Drug Discovery and Development

The clinical-stage biopharma Acelyrin has appointed Bruce C. Cozadd, co-founder and CEO of Jazz Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:JAZZ), to its board of directors. Cozadd co-founded Jazz Pharmaceuticals in 2003. Last year, the company brought in $3 billion in revenue. Cozadd continues to serve as the company’s chairperson and CEO. Before taking the helm of Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Cozadd…

AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) is looking for final year MD or PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to reach out with ideas to speed drug discovery and development in the company’s core disease areas. The company’s central focus areas include oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolism; and respiratory and immunology. Candidates accepted into the program have a fully funded…

PhysIQ announced today that it will collaborate with CellCarta to undertake a study using AI in vaccine development. Enrollment is now complete in the VIII (Vaccine-induced inflammation investigation), which will monitor individual differences in physiologic changes associated with immune system activation in patients receiving vaccinations, including those developed to combat diseases like COVID-19. According to…

AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) and Gedeon Richter have formed a co-development and license agreement focused on novel dopamine receptor modulators with the potential to treat neuropsychiatric diseases. Lake Bluff, Illinois-headquartered AbbVie and Budapest, Hungary-based Gedeon Richter have already collaborated for 15 years in central nervous system projects, including the development of cariprazine (Vraylar/Reagila), which is now authorized to…

Cannabidiol (CBD) is fast emerging as an exciting ingredient across the pharmaceutical market, powered by increasing scientific research investigating its potential benefits in a number of disease states, including central nervous system (CNS) disorders, pain management, cancer and more. While there is a remarkable opportunity for the development of CBD-based solutions in the field, formulation…

Researchers from the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) are conducting a clinical trial on allergic reactions to mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. The single-site trial will enroll up to 100 people between 16 and 69 years old who had an allergic reaction to a first dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. NIAID seeks participants…

Midatech Pharma (Nasdaq:MTP) announced today that it extended its R&D collaboration with Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE:JNJ) Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Cardiff, United Kingdom-based Midatech, a drug delivery technology company focused on the biodelivery and biodistribution of medicines, initially entered into the R&D collaboration with Janssen on July 21, 2020. Get the full story at our sister site, Drug Delivery Business News.

Evonik (Essen, Germany) announced today that it now offers Eudratec SoluFlow, a microparticle technology meant to enhance solubility of active pharmaceutical ingredients in oral drug products. The emulsion-based process technology overcomes solubility hurdles that cannot be resolved by existing manufacturing technologies, according to Evonik. With more than 70% of new small molecules being insoluble, Eudratec…

The pandemic exposed the innovation divide between the digitally transformed and those that lagged. Strict regulation made life sciences and bio/pharma organizations hesitant to modernize too quickly away from proven legacy methods and technologies, resulting in varying levels of digital transformation. But since the pandemic, organizations now recognize the necessity of digitalization and smart automation…

Tthe pharma industry has ramped up its ability to innovate in the past couple of years. Many firms in the sector have retooled operations, rethought clinical trials and accelerated the ability to commercialize new drugs. Clarivate’s Top 100 Global Innovators 2022 report, however, cited only two pharma companies. Clarivate also projects that the level of innovation…

Researchers at MIT are touting a novel method to synthesize a natural compound that has shown potential as an antibiotic. The chemists produced himastatin using the synthesis method and also managed to generate variants of the molecule, some of which showed antimicrobial activity, according to a news story from the university’s website. The compound appears…

Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) shares are on the rise on fourth-quarter results that came in ahead of the consensus forecast. MRNA shares were up 11.7% at $161.51 per share in midday trading today. MassDevice’s MedTech 100 Index — which includes stocks of the world’s largest medical device companies — was up 1.1%. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company posted…

Few healthcare companies were included in the annual ranking of innovative companies from the analytics firm Clarivate plc (NYSE:CLVT). Two companies in pharma and another in medtech, however, made the cut. Johnson & Johnson was featured for the second consecutive year as a top 100 Global innovator. Roche was included for the 11th consecutive year…

CAR T-cell therapies specialist CARsgen Therapeutics (Shanghai) has announced the completion of a 37,000-ft2 facility for clinical and early-stage commercial manufacturing after 12 months of construction. The company enlisted the help of CRB (St. Louis) in building the cGMP manufacturing facility located within the Research Triangle Park In Durham, North Carolina. CRB is an engineering,…

The U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Robert Califf as FDA commissioner in a 50-46 vote today. The vote capped a months-long campaign to secure Califf’s confirmation after President Joe Biden nominated him to return to the post he held near the end of the Obama administration. The Senate voted 49-45 yesterday on a cloture vote to…

Demand is heating up for Quillaja saponin-based adjuvants, which owe their existence to the soap bark tree (Quillaja saponaria) found primarily in Chile. In particular, the QS-21 saponin adjuvant is popular. It is found in GSK’s (NYSE:GSK) Shingrix shingles vaccine, GSK’s Mosquirix malaria vaccine and Novavax’s (NSDQ:NVAX) COVID-19 vaccine. QS-21 is uniquely capable of enhancing…

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) shares slid today on fourth-quarter results that came up shy of the consensus sales forecast. The pharmaceutical giant posted profits of $3.4 billion, or 59¢ per share, on sales of $23.8 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, 2021, more than quadrupling its bottom-line on revenues that were more than doubled year-over-year.…

MIT researchers are touting a machine learning model that can predict the complex that will form when proteins bind together. The technique represents an improvement on speed by somewhere between 80 and 500 times faster than state-of-the-art software methods and often predicts protein structures that are closer to actual structures that have been observed experimentally…

Because of the way they provide protection, nasal vaccines could be the best long-term way to prevent COVID-19 infection, according to experts cited in The New York Times. The Times reported that India-based Bharat Biotech, which has the Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine authorized in India and elsewhere, has an experimental COVID-19 nasal vaccine that may offer…

Drug formulation involves balancing the body’s ability to use and then eliminate the drug candidate. The field of pharmacology is dedicated to this balancing act, studying how a drug candidate influences biological systems and the body’s reaction to that compound. This task involves the study of pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD). Pharmacokinetics is the study…

Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) announced today that it received full FDA approval of the biologics license application for its COVID-19 vaccine. FDA’s approval for the company’s Spikevax mRNA COVID-19 vaccine covers the prevention of the virus in individuals aged 18 years or older. Moderna submitted for full FDA approval back in June 2021 and becomes the second…

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NSDQ:REGN) and Sanofi (NSDQ:SNY) have voluntarily withdrawn the supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for Libtayo (cemiplimab-rwlc) as a second-line treatment for advanced cervical cancer. A press release noted that the agency and the sponsors were unable to “align on certain post-marketing studies” that would have been required to greelight the sBLA. FDA first…

The field of pharmacovigilance has evolved significantly in recent years. While regulatory authorities have long favored technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning for monitoring patient safety, the trend has accelerated during the pandemic. “I’ve never seen as much advancement as I have in the last two years,” said Marie Flanagan, director, offering management,…

For pharmaceutical companies, cyberattacks can get expensive quickly.  In 2021, the average cost of a data breach was $5 million, which is the third-highest of any industry, according to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach report.  Cyberattacks can also cause operational disruptions. For example, in 2017, Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) struggled to keep…

BD (NYSE:BDX) touted a study on innovation in flow cytometry that featured as the cover story of the journal Science. Franklin Lakes, New Jersey-based BD’s study was conducted in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). It evaluated BD’s flow cytometry efforts that add fluorescence imaging and image-based decision-making to sort individual cells at high…