By John Carroll Pfizer’s quest to find a more productive way to discover and advance important new treatments is taking the pharma giant on a journey back to college in Boston. With some of Pfizer’s R&D luminaries joining hands with top politicians, the company announced a $100 million, five-year plan to establish a new Center …
By John Carroll While Wall Street has been transfixed by signs that Pfizer CEO Ian Read is preparing to sell off large chunks of its business so it can concentrate on pharmaceutical sales and new drug development to replace the blockbusters slated to lose patent protection, Read has been pushing full-steam-ahead on plans to radically …
By John Carroll A little more than two years since it announced a $3.5 million Series A round, San Diego’s Zacharon Pharmaceuticals has inked a $210 million discovery deal with Pfizer ($PFE) that will target new drugs for rare diseases. Underscoring Big Pharma’s growing interest in orphan diseases, Pfizer says that Zacharon will help it hunt for …
By John Carroll While the life sciences sector in the UK is still reeling from Pfizer’s decision to pull out of Sandwich and chop 2,400 researchers from its payroll, some investor groups are preparing to make lemonade out of the fresh crop of lemons. David Pinniger, manager of SV Life Sciences’ International Biotechnology Trust, expects to …
By Maureen Martino Seattle-based biotech Theraclone has signed a deal with Pfizer in which the company will use its I-STAR platform technology to help the Big Pharma identify monoclonal antibodies against up to four undisclosed targets–two for infectious disease and two for cancer. I-STAR can quickly test tens of thousands of antibodies to find those with the …
By Howard Lovy Pfizer and drug researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, will walk hand-in-hand through the “valley of death” via an R&D collaboration, according to the Wall Street Journal. Translating scientific research into something marketable is often referred to as “the valley of death,” because so many promising therapeutics fail at this stage. “The …
By Maureen Martino MacroGenics has inked a research deal with Pfizer to discover, develop and commercialize Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART) products directed at two undisclosed cancer targets. MacroGenics gets an upfront payment, milestones and royalties, but full financial details of the deal were not disclosed. MacroGenics’ DART technology is a antibody platform which allows a single recombinant molecule …
By John Carroll Pfizer is turning to India’s Biocon to help it develop some biosimilar insulin products and lay claim to a bigger slice of the globe’s emerging market business, slapping down $200 million upfront and promising another $150 million in milestones. As Forbes‘ Matthew Herper notes, Biocon makes generic versions of therapies owned by the …
By John Carroll With a new neurodegenerative disease therapy up for regulatory review and a fresh $29 million financing round sitting in the bank, FoldRx announced this morning that Pfizer has moved in to scoop up the Cambridge, MA-based biotech to add to its orphan drug pipeline. The companies kept the numbers under wraps, but they …
By Tracy Staton Think Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) has had enough of buyouts for awhile, now that it’s partially digested the $68 billion Wyeth acquisition? Think again. CFO Frank D’Amelio told the German newspaper Handelsblatt that the company is scouting for potential buys in several specific areas, including emerging markets. Pfizer’s also interested in acquisitions that would augment …
