Pe­ter Dia­man­dis

A start­up in San Fran­cis­co called Ele­vian has round­ed up $5.5 mil­lion in seed cash to pur­sue its work on a re­gen­er­a­tive med­i­cine pro­gram.

The big idea here is that re­search at Stan­ford and Har­vard found that “young blood” has a re­gen­er­a­tive im­pact on or­gans. And they be­lieve as a con­se­quence that boost­ing GDF11 — growth dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion fac­tor 11 — could play an an­ti-ag­ing role in hu­mans.

The founders have li­censed the tech they’re work­ing on from Har­vard.

Bold Cap­i­tal, WTI, Stan­ford StartX fund, Longevi­ty fund, Ki­zoo Ven­tures, Thynk Cap­i­tal, and oth­er in­vestors chipped in.

Cue the big dreams.

“Ele­vian is help­ing to lead a rev­o­lu­tion in longevi­ty. We are proud to sup­port them as in­vest­ment part­ners,” said Pe­ter Dia­man­dis, found­ing in­vestor.

Fewer Approvals, but Neurology Rivals Oncology and Sees Major Innovations

This report, the fourth in our Trinity Drug Index series, outlines key themes and emerging trends in the industry as we progress towards a new world of targeted and innovative products. It provides a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of novel drugs approved by the FDA in 2016, scoring each on its commercial performance, therapeutic value, and R&D investment (Table 1: Drug ranking – Ratings on a 1-5 scale).

For start-up biotechnology companies and resource stretched pharmaceutical organisations, launching a novel product can be challenging. Lean teams can make setting a launch strategy and achieving your commercial goals seem like a colossal undertaking, but can these barriers be transformed into opportunities that work to your brand’s advantage?
We spoke to Managing Consultant Frances Hendry to find out how Blue Latitude Health partnered with a fledgling subsidiary of a pharmaceutical organisation to launch an innovative product in a
complex market.
What does the launch environment look like for this product?
FH: We started working on the product at Phase II and now we’re going into Phase III trials. There is a significant unmet need in this disease area, and everyone is excited about the launch. However, the organisation is still evolving and the team is quite small – naturally this causes a little turbulence.

Roche’s Kadcyla has become the first antibody-drug conjugate to enter the Chinese market, marking a dramatic advance for both the Swiss pharma giant and the therapeutic class.

The local arm of Roche announced the approval late Tuesday, which covers the therapy’s use in the adjuvant setting in patients with early HER-2 positive breast cancer who still have residual invasive disease after receiving paclitaxel and Herceptin as neoadjuvant treatment.

Pascal Soriot has spent more than 20 years at the top of an industry recently found to emit more carbon than the automotive industry.

He called himself a “global citizen,” and traveled often across three-plus continents. While CEO of AstraZeneca, he commissioned a flight service — media-dubbed AstraZeneca airlines — from Cambridge to the company’s other European hub in Gothenburg. He made few, if any, public statements on the environment or his companies’ impact on it.

With an FDA decision date looming, Roche on Wednesday unveiled positive pivotal data on its blockbuster-bound oral spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) drug in patients with the most severe form of the muscle-wasting disease.

The FDA is set to make its decision on the therapy, risdiplam, by May 24. It is expected to compete with Biogen’s Spinraza and Novartis’ Zolgensma.

Partnered with PTC Therapeutics, the Roche drug was tested in 41 patients aged 1-7 months with type 1 SMA, a rare genetic muscle-wasting disease. The trial, dubbed FIREFISH, measured efficacy via the proportion of infants sitting without support after 12 months of treatment, and longer.

Every few years, a public health crisis (think Ebola, Zika) spurred by a rogue pathogen triggers a small-biotech rally, as drugmakers emerge from the woodwork with ambitious plans to treat the mounting outbreak. In most cases, that enthusiasm never quite delivers.

Things are no different, as the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China takes hold. There have been close to 300 confirmed human infections in China, and at least four deaths. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, which include MERS and SARS. On Tuesday, the CDC reported the virus was detected in a US traveler returning from Wuhan.