Biogen Eyes Cambridge Move, Vertex Licenses Alios Drugs, Concert Nabs GSK Payment, & More Boston-Area Life Sciences News

the total amount of money raised by the company to $70 million.

—Lexington, MA-based Concert Pharmaceuticals said one of the novel drug candidates in its pipeline nabbed a $4 million milestone payment from GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: [[ticker:GSK]]), which is making the molecule its lead drug in an HIV program that it partnered with Concert on in 2009.

—An experimental skin cancer drug developed by Cambridge-based Curis and South San Francisco-based Genentech passed a pivotal clinical trial of 104 patients.

—Waltham, MA-based Tesaro took in a $101 million Series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The deal also included founding backer New Enterprise Associates, and new investors that include InterWest Partners, T. Rowe Price, Pappas Ventures, Oracle Partners, Deerfield Management, and Leerink Swann. Tesaro looks to scoop up drug candidates discovered by other biotechs and further them through clinical development.

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Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.