People and Places in the News

FDA Approval

Accentia Biopharmaceuticals Inc. and its majority-owned subsidiary, Biovest International Inc., has been granted orphan drug designation for Revimmune for the prevention of graft-versus-host disease following bone marrow transplant.

Appointments

Abbie Cornett, Nebraska state senator and current board of trustee chairperson for the Alliance for Biotherapeutics, has assumed the additional role of president for the Alliance. The Alliance was formed in 2007 under the name The Alliance for Plasma Therapies to advocate for patients in need of specialty biotherapeutics.

Kathleen M. Metters, PhD, former senior vice president and head of worldwide basic research at Merck, has been named president and chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors at Lycera Corp., a biopharmaceutical company pioneering innovative approaches to developing novel oral medicines to treat autoimmune diseases.

Rebecca H. Buckley, MD, has been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences for her life-saving research in pediatric immunological diseases. Dr. Buckley is the J. Buren Sidbury Professor of Pediatrics and professor of immunology at Duke University Medical Center.

Acquisitions/Alliances

Shire Human Genetic Therapies Inc. announced its Firazyr (icatibant injection), for treating hereditary angioedema in adults 18 years of age and older, received FDA approval in August.

Merck Serono has acquired worldwide exclusive rights to a Phase IIready multiple sclerosis candidate, PI-2301, originally developed by Peptimmune Inc. after it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2011.

Zymeworks Inc. and Merck are collaborating to develop novel bi-specific antibody therapeutic candidates designed to bind to two different drug targets for broad use in clinical applications such as oncology or autoimmune disease.

Kineta has been awarded its second National Institutes of Health (NIH) contract of $1.4 million to identify new drug targets for infectious, cardiovascular, neurological, metabolic and autoimmune diseases.

GlaxoSmithKline has entered into a strategic alliance with Fondazione Telethon and Fondazione San Raffaele to research and develop novel treatments to address rare genetic disorders using gene therapy carried out on stem cells taken from the patient’s bone marrow (ex vivo).

Sanofi-aventis has established a research collaboration with Harvard University to advance knowledge in translational biomedical research in multiple therapeutic areas, including cancer, diabetes and inflammation.

Cangene Corp. has merged its indirect, wholly owned subsidiaries MidFlorida Biologicals Inc., which operates plasma-collection facilities in Florida and Maryland, and Biotherapeutic Laboratories Inc., which operates a plasma-collection center in California.

Baxter International Inc. has agreed to acquire all of the hemophiliarelated assets of Archemix, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, and has entered into an exclusive license agreement for certain related intellectual property assets.

Amgen is partnering with Xencor to jointly develop XmAb587, an Fc-engineered monoclonal antibody dually targeting the CD19 and CD32b pathways that is currently in Phase II testing. XmAb587 is a potentially promising new treatment for auto-immune diseases.

MolMed SpA has signed an agreement with GlaxoSmithKline under which MolMedwill develop a production process for an investigational gene therapy for adenosine deaminase deficiency-severe combined immune deficiency (ADA-SCID).

The David H. Murdock Research Institute has acquired the Immune Tolerance Institute Inc. to accelerate the discovery and development of breakthrough treatments for the range of immune-related diseases.

Dyadic, Sanofi Pasteur and Engen Bio are partnering on research that will utilize Dyadic’s C1 fungus platform for certain vaccine applications.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is acquiring Phadia, a global leader in allergy and autoimmunity diagnostics, from European private equity firm Cinven. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Debiopharm is working with researchers at Yale University to develop Debio 1036, a first-in-class inhibitor for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Debio 1036 is an orally available small molecule that antagonizes a key mediator in the inflammation process.

RxMD, a global therapeutics development company, has entered into an agreement with GlycoRegimmune Inc. (GRI) to develop new treatments for inflammatory, autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions based on GRI’s novel natural killer T celltargeted technologies.