Deals, Development and Manufacturing

Merger cites combined strengths in oncology, immunology and inflammation, and cardiovascular disease.

Orphan and cancer drugs continue to lead, but treatments for many common diseases were also approved in 2018.

While pharma is proving its capabilities to develop novel therapies, the industry still needs to work on manufacturing innovation.

The companies will join forces to develop and commercialize an oncology drug to treat hematological cancers.

Horizon Discovery Group and C4X Discovery Holdings have entered into an exclusive partnership aimed at validating targets and developing next-generation oncology drugs.

Agilent and other partners are funding development of Tapestri, a single-cell sequencing platform designed to help predict cancer relapse in individual patients and show the efficacy of gene-editing experiments.

The companies will develop a digital platform for the development and lifecycle management of antibiotics.

Roquette has announced the completion of its acquisition of a majority stake in a pharma packaging company based in India.

Eli Lilly and AC Immune have signed a license and collaboration agreement focussing on the R&D of tau aggregation inhibitor small molecules for the potential treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Avacta Group and LC Chem Life Sciences have entered into a multi-target collaboration and development agreement.

The company will use GE Healthcare’s off-the-shelf KUBio biologics factory, which is expected to start operations in 2020, to provide development and manufacturing for early- to late-clinical and early-commercial manufacturing stages.

FDA has approved Truxima (rituximab-abbs), a biosimilar to Roche’s anti-cancer biologic, Rituxan (rituximab).

The companies aim to advance research into inflammatory bowel disease.

The UK's government has revealed the details of the second Life Sciences sector deal, forming part of the Industrial Strategy.

The acquisition will give Genentech full rights to Jecure’s preclinical portfolio of NLRP3 inhibitors.

The investment builds on a collaboration the companies entered into in 2007 for various biomanufacturing projects.

The partnership, co-funded by Enterprise Ireland, will develop technologies for monitoring the quality of biopharma processes.

Cobra, Pall, and Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult are collaborating to develop continuous manufacturing for gene therapy production.

The University of South Australia is working to develop needle-free vaccines for Zika, chikingunya, and peanut allergy in a collaboration with Australian biotechnology company Sementis and Enesi Pharma, a United Kingdom-based pharmaceutical company.

Under the new long-term agreement, Sartorius Stedim Biotech will continue to offer Lonza media and buffer products under non-exclusive terms.

AstraZeneca is set to divest United States rights to Synagis (palivizumab) to Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (Sobi), a biopharmaceutical company focused on rare diseases, for $1.5 billion.

The companies will develop AMG 714, a novel anti-IL-15 monoclonal antibody, for the treatment of gluten-free diet non-responsive celiac disease in a collaboration worth $170 million.

Improving the manufacturing of gene therapy vectors will be crucial to making advanced treatments accessible to more patients who need them, agreed panelists at the 2018 Galien Forum.

The companies will develop treatments for a range of neurological and inflammatory diseases.

The multi-year collaboration will incorporate NextCure's proprietary FIND-IO platform, a technology designed to identify novel cell-surface molecular interactions that drive functional immune responses in the tumor microenvironment and other disease sites.

The company has rolled out the first batch of TRACON Pharmaceutical’s lead product candidate from its Singapore-based single-use bioreactor.

This new partnership provides access to Distributed Bio’s antibody discovery platforms.

he acquisition expands the company’s formulation and analytical R&D services.

The acquisition will allow Lonza to further develop technology for scalable autologous cell-therapy manufacturing.

Idifarma, a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), based in Spain, has announced the commencement of the seventh project with Palobiofarma-a Spanish biotechnology company.