The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation today closed Silicon Valley Bank, which could expose medtech companies with relations to the bank. The FDIC — appointed as receiver in the closing — created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB). This protects insured depositors, the FDIC said in a news release. At the time of closing, the FDIC immediately transferred to the DINB all insured deposits of Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank’s reach extends to

RL-007: First patient dosed in the on-going phase 2b study in cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia GRX-917: Intention to progress GRX-917 into a phase 2 study in an anxiety disorder as the next step in clinical development COMP360: Recently announced acceleration of the Pivotal Trial 1 (COMP 005) part of the phase 3 program, with top line data now expected in the summer of 2024 Corporate: As a result of our recent restructuring and pipeline updates, the company has extended its cas

The European Commission (EC) has granted AstraZeneca three new drug approvals, with the company’s Imfinzi/Imjudo immunotherapy combinations authorised for advanced liver and lung cancers, and a tablet formulation of Calquence for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). The Imfinzi/ Imjudo approvals authorise the combination to be used for the first line treatment of adult patients with advanced or unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), with the addition of platinum-based chemotherapy for adu

The Phase 3 GRAPHITE Study Met Its Primary Efficacy Endpoint of Significant and Clinically Meaningful Intestinal aGvHD-Free Survival as Compared to Placebo by Day 180 after Allo-HSCT (p<0.001) No New Safety Signals Were Seen with Vedolizumab Compared with Placebo in Patients Who Received Allo-HSCT Data Were Presented as A Late-Breaking Abstract at The 2023 Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) and

– Vir to continue advancing next-generation COVID-19 solutions independently or with other partners – – The Companies will continue working together to ensure ongoing access to sotrovimab for patients around the world, where authorized, and to advance new therapies for influenza and other respiratory diseases – Vir Biotechnology, Inc. (Nasdaq: VIR) today announced that the research collaboration agreement established with GSK in 2020 has been amended to reflect that Vir will continue its ongoing

Alcon (SIX/NYSE: ALC) recently announced that it has settled a patent dispute with J&J Surgical Vision. The $199 million settlement, announced Feb. 12, ends a lawsuit that J&J had filed in June 2020 in U.S. District Court in Delaware. J&J Surgical Vision had claimed that Alcon femtosecond laser-assisted cataract surgery devices, including the company’s LenSx device, infringed on one or more claims in 12 of J&J’s U.S. patents. The LenSx laser system cataract procedures [Image courtesy of Alcon]

Cancer therapeutics accounted for most of the recent funding news. Immunology was represented too. Here’s a recap of the biotech startups that raised money in the past week. —Synthetic biology company Evonetix raised $24 million, extending its Series B financing to $54 million. Cambridge, U.K.-based Evonetix has proprietary technology that enables speedy synthesis of thousands of DNA sequences on a single silicon chip. The company said it will use the new cash to bring its chips to commercial sc

Epic, Nordic, Impact Advisors, The Chartis Group and Medasource were the five companies with the best performances in this year’s Best in KLAS Awards. The rankings, which were released on Wednesday, grade health IT vendors and consulting firms based on feedback from healthcare organizations that have adopted their products or used their services. KLAS Research named Epic as the top overall software suite for the thirteenth year in a row. Meditech Expanse’s health IT software suite came in second

Courtesy of JHVEPhoto/GettyImages One day after the Biden administration announced it will let COVID-19 emergency measures expire in May, Pfizer released full-year 2022 numbers Tuesday that reflect a collective move into a different stage of the pandemic. The results for Pfizer and BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine, Comirnaty, were mixed. While sales for 2022 exceeded 2021 by 3% at $37.81 billion, the company expects this to fall to $13.5 billion in 2023. This reflects a projected dose demand of 65

BASEL, Switzerland I January 27, 2023 I The preliminary results from the ongoing global phase III study STAND (NCT03814746) indicate no statistically significant difference between crizanlizumab 5mg/kg or crizanlizumab 7.5mg/kg and placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises (pain crises) leading to a healthcare visit over the first-year post randomization. These findings are inconsistent with previous trial results from SUSTAIN (NCT01895361), which demonstrated the superiority of criza