Europe

#Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services has invested over £1.5m ($1.9m) during the last year, to expand its sterile biologics manufacturing facility in Scotland, UK by 25%.

Swiss-based Roche’s is buying Spark Therapeutics for of $114.50 per share in cash, total $4.3 billion through its fully owned subsidiary 022019 Merger Subsidiary.

Inceptua, a pharmaceutical company and service partner in comparator sourcing for clinical trials, through early access programs to licensing and commercialization of products, said Wednesday that Stefan Fraenkel, Executive Vice President, and Member of the Executive Leadership Team, is promoted to CEO effective 1 January, 2020.

Synimmune GmbH, a biotechnology company focusing on the development of innovative and effective anti-tumor antibodies for orphan hematopoietic malignancies, presented results of its first-in-human clinical study of FLYSYN, a novel Fc-optimized antibody, for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) were presented at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Eli Lilly said Thursday it will work with new leadership and strategic direction in oncology R&D, combining the Lilly Research Laboratories (LRL) oncology organization and Loxo Oncology, which was acquired by Lilly in early 2019.

Bayer said Wednesday it is transforming its IT function to further accelerate the digitalization of the company, by which leading IT providers will take over standardized services, such as the provision of digital workplaces for employees or the global operation of IT infrastructure.

Sygnature Discovery has added in-house high-throughput screening (HTS) to its range of drug discovery services. This is backed up by its new Leadfinder compound library.

AstraZeneca and FibroGen’s pooled cardiovascular (CV) safety analyses showed that roxadustat, an oral first-in-class hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor (HIF-PHI), did not increase the risk of MACE, MACE+ and all-cause mortality in non dialysis-dependent (NDD) patients compared to placebo and dialysis-dependent (DD) patients compared to epoetin alfa, a current medicine used to treat anaemia.

Vaccibody AS, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer vaccines, announced in a press release on November 5, 2019 the positive initial data from the ongoing VB N-01 (DIRECT-01) phase I/IIa clinical trial of the VB10.NEO neoantigen cancer vaccine.

Arix Bioscience said Wednesday that its portfolio company Artios Pharma Ltd, has entered in-licensing agreement of a small-molecule ATR inhibitor programme from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and ShangPharma.