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Blueprint Medicines(NASDAQ: BPMC), a leader in discovering and developing highly selective investigational kinase medicines for patients with genomically defined diseases, today announced the appointment of Kathryn (Kate) Haviland as Chief Business Officer.  Ms. Haviland will join the executive management team and will be responsible for Blueprint Medicines’ corporate strategy, business development, corporate communications and investor relations functions.

“We are thrilled to welcome Kate to Blueprint Medicines. Kate brings an impressive breadth of experience and leadership within the biopharmaceutical industry. Her substantial background in business development, commercial and strategic planning and program management will be indispensable as we continue to explore the depth of our pipeline of highly selective investigational kinase medicines and discover additional applications for our novel target discovery engine,” said Jeff Albers, Chief Executive Officer of Blueprint Medicines. “We look forward to her contributions as a member of our executive leadership team as we seek to build Blueprint Medicines into a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company capable of making a substantial difference for patients.”

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Acacia Pharma Group plc (“Acacia Pharma”), the supportive care company developing products for US and international markets, announces positive results from a Phase 3 study investigating BAREMSIS^™ (amisulpride injection, formerly APD421) in combination with standard antiemetics for the prevention of post-operative nausea & vomiting (“PONV”) in high-risk patients.

Dr Julian Gilbert, Acacia Pharma’s CEO commented: “There is a compelling medical and commercial need for a safe and effective dopamine antagonist antiemetic that can be used in combination with current standard-of-care to manage PONV. The results from this study show that BAREMSIS could be used in the prevention of PONV in high-risk patients. Very pleasingly, the magnitude of BAREMSIS’ effect, a relative risk reduction of 22%, was consistent with the results seen in our monotherapy prophylaxis trials and, most importantly, with that routinely seen with the current standard-of-care drugs such as ondansetron.”

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Blueprint Medicines(NASDAQ: BPMC), a leader in discovering and developing highly selective kinase medicines for patients with genomically defined diseases, today announced that it has been added to the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index® (NASDAQ: NBI). The annual re-constitution of the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index will become effective upon market open on Monday, December 21, 2015.

The NASDAQ Biotechnology Index is designed to track the performance of a set of securities listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market ® (NASDAQ®) that are classified as either biotechnology or pharmaceutical according to the Industry Classification Benchmark (ICB). The NASDAQ Biotechnology Index is calculated under a modified capitalization-weighted methodology and ranked on an annual basis. All securities in the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index are listed on the NASDAQ Global Market or the NASDAQ Global Select Market and meet certain eligibility requirements.

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Unum Therapeutics, a company developing a universal cellular immunotherapy to treat multiple cancers, announced today that it has received unanimous approval by the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) for its first U.S.-based clinical trial. The Phase 1 trial will evaluate Unum’s Antibody-Coupled T-cell Receptor (ACTR) platform in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) patients who have failed to respond or relapsed following treatment with chemotherapy plus rituximab. Under the protocol, Unum will co-administer ACTR T-cells and rituximab to target and attack CD20-positive tumor cells.

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Dimension Therapeutics, Inc.(NASDAQ:DMTX), a leading gene therapy company advancing novel, liver-directed treatments for diverse rare diseases, today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2015, and provided an update on the company’s recent corporate progress.

“With the proceeds from our IPO, we are well-capitalized to maintain the momentum of our gene therapy product portfolio, particularly DTX101, our lead product candidate for hemophilia B which we expect will enter phase 1/2 clinical development by the end of this year,” said Annalisa Jenkins, MBBS, MRCP, Chief Executive Officer of Dimension. “Additionally, we are in a strong position to rapidly advance multiple development programs addressing significant unmet medical needs for patients living with rare genetic disorders associated with the liver.”

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Acacia Pharma Group plc (“Acacia Pharma”), the supportive care company developing products for US and international markets, today announces that Ian Kent will retire as non-executive Chairman on 31^st December 2015 and will be succeeded by Dr Patrick Vink.

Patrick Vink most recently served as chief operating officer of Cubist Pharmaceuticals, joining there from senior roles at Mylan Inc., including having global responsibility for the group’s hospital business. Previously Patrick held several leadership positions with Novartis Sandoz, Sanofi and Biogen, principally in global commercial roles. He is also a non-executive director of Inhibikase Inc. and Micreos BV.

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Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTPH), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibiotics to treat life-threatening multidrug-resistant (MDR) infections, today announced thatGuy Macdonald, Tetraphase’s President and Chief Executive Officer, will present at the Oppenheimer 26^th Annual Healthcare Conference onTuesday, December 8^th at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time at the Westin Grand Central Hotel in New York City.

A live audio webcast of the Oppenheimer presentation will be available on the company’s website at http://ir.tphase.com/events.cfm.  An archived presentation will be available for 90 days.

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Blueprint Medicines (NASDAQ: BPMC), a leader in discovering and developing highly selective kinase medicines for patients with genomically defined diseases, and PatientCrossroads, a pioneer in spearheading the adoption of patient-entered disease registries, today announced the launch of Mast Cell Connect, a patient registry to advance the understanding of mastocytosis and help speed the development of new therapies. Blueprint Medicines, which is developing a treatment for patients with systemic mastocytosis, is sponsoring the registry. PatientCrossroads’ robust platform will be used to host and manage the registry, including patient privacy, data collection and access.

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