Fierce Biotech

A new study showed that by employing secondary signals from heart rates, physical activity and sleep quality, common Fitbit trackers may be able to predict the spread of the flu in real time and better than current infectious disease surveillance methods.

Nanox, an Israeli medical imaging company, has raised $26 million to help fuel the development and commercialization of its Star Trek-inspired digital X-ray bed.

SAN FRANCISCO—Oncology is clearly a major medical and societal issue: a major killer that, while predominately affecting the older population, can strike the young through a mixture of environmental factors or a genetic lottery. It’s no wonder we struggle to even call it by its name, preferring just the "big C."

A FDA advisory committee has issued an evenly split decision on Durect’s extended-release formulation of bupivacaine. Durect’s share price fell 12% after half of the panel of painkiller experts recommended against approving Posimir on the basis of the available evidence.

China-based cancer and autoimmune disease biotech I-Mab Biopharma has raised $104 million on the U.S. Nasdaq composite.

Frazier Healthcare Partners has closed a $617 million life science fund, setting it up to place another set of bets spanning from company creation through public investments. Two-thirds of Frazier Life Sciences X will go into seed and series A rounds. 

In this week's EuroBiotech Report, MorphoSys lands Incyte deal, Adaptimmune teams with Astellas and Galapagos bags fibrosis options.

In our EuroBiotech roundup this week, Keytruda combo trial advances, Theranexus seeks Alzheimer’s partner and Medicxi releases funding tranche.

SAN FRANCISCO—Having worked on drugs like Zyprexa and Cymbalta over his 17 years at Eli Lilly, Steven Paul, M.D., left in 2010 to “do something a bit more entrepreneurial”—he founded a pair of central nervous system-focused biotech companies and stepped up to lead a third.

Pfizer has entered into a research collaboration with Insilico Medicine. The partners will use Insilico’s technology to identify real-world evidence for drug targets in multiple therapeutic areas.

There’s been a deal at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, but probably not with the largest names and certainly not big bucks.

Analysts at Jefferies expect Biogen to file for approval of aducanumab in Alzheimer’s disease within weeks. Biogen, for its part, is keeping mum about its plans, stating only that it is preparing modules of the common technical document for submission to the FDA.

A new $100 million (€85 million) capital fund out of Germany has closed and is looking for “ground-breaking” European, Israeli and American medical technology companies to help push on with heart disease tech work.

SAN FRANCISCO—Concerto HealthAI unveiled a steady drum beat of announcements at this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, including a $150 million funding round and separate real-world data partnerships with Big Pharma companies.

SAN FRANCISCO—Robotic surgery company TransEnterix has put up its machine vision system for review by the FDA with the goal of providing a personal digital assistant for surgeons during abdominal procedures.

SAN FRANCISCO—After working on cystic fibrosis medicines during her 15 years at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Patricia Hurter was ready for retirement. She hoped to line up more flexible work she could do while traveling, but when she met with Lyndra CEO Amy Schulman about a potential board position, Schulman offered Hurter her own job instead.

Galapagos has struck another deal to expand its fibrosis pipeline, picking up an option to license four Fibrocor programs. The deal comes one year after Galapagos landed global rights to an early-stage idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis treatment in development at Fibrocor.

Emendo Biotherapeutics has raised a $61 million series B to take forward programs based on its gene editing platform. The New York-based biotech has worked to expand the list of diseases amenable to treatment with gene editing, resulting in a pipeline of hematology and ophthalmology programs. 

Inhibitors against PD-1 and CTLA-4 have become well-established anti-cancer treatments. Now, a research team led by Dartmouth College suggests another immune checkpoint, which acts as a “brake” on naive T cells' activation, could also serve as a therapeutic target for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Nektar Therapeutics has withdrawn the new drug application for its opioid oxycodegol after an advisory committee unanimously recommended against approval. The 27-0 vote against approval followed questioning of Nektar’s decision to run one pivotal trial and the extent to which it assessed the risk of abuse.