$50 million by selling 5 million shares at $10 apiece through a public stock offering. OvaScience will use the cash to gear up to begin selling its souped-up in vitro fertilization procedure, Augment, internationally and develop a product called OvaPrime designed to boost a woman’s egg reserves. It’s still unclear if or when OvaScience will be able to sell Augment in the U.S., however: the FDA said last year that it wants the company to file an investigational new drug application and seek regulatory approval for the procedure.
—Safi Bahcall, the longtime president and CEO of Lexington, MA-based Synta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SNTA]]) abruptly resigned this week. Synta didn’t say why Bahcall left his post, but he’s been replaced by a newly-appointed “executive committee of the board” headed by current chairman Keith Gollust and including former Incyte CEO Paul Friedman and retired Johnson & Johnson vice chairman Robert Wilson. The panel will run Synta until the company can find a replacement for Bahcall. Discussions regarding Bahcall’s exit deal are ongoing, according to an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Synta has been developing an experimental cancer drug, ganetespib, that’s being tested in clinical trials as a treatment for lung, breast, and other cancers.
—Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University and others this week touted the results of a study testing New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (NYSE: [[ticker:BMY]]) experimental cancer antibody nivolumab in patients with advanced melanoma. The institutions reported that of the 107 patients taking Bristol’s drug, 62 percent were alive after one year and 43 percent were alive after two years. The patients, on average, were expected to live for one year. Nivolumab blocks PD-1, a protein on T cells that prevents them from seeking out and attacking tumors.
—At the Cowen and Co. healthcare conference this week in Boston, Brian Daniels, the head of global development at Bristol-Myers, said that the company expects to advance the closely-watched combination cancer immunotherapy regimen consisting of nivolumab and ipilimumab (Yervoy) into a Phase III lung cancer study by the end of the year, according to a research note from Leerink Partners’ Seamus Fernandez. Both antibodies work via different mechanisms to help the immune system seek out and fight cancer cells. Bristol-Myers is in a heated race with Merck, Roche/Genentech and others to bring a new wave of cancer immunotherapy treatments to market.
—Cambridge-based Moderna Therapeutics hired veteran biotech banker Lorence Kim as its chief financial officer. Kim is coming off a nearly 14-year stint at Goldman Sachs, where he was most recently the managing director and co-head of the firm’s biotech investment banking group.
—Dublin, Ireland and Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALKS]]) kicked off a big phase III program for ALKS-5461, the once-daily pill it’s developing for major depressive disorder. Alkermes will run a total of 12 studies testing about 1,500 patients. Alkermes is enrolling people that haven’t responded to initial treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). Its goal will be to see a statistically significant change in patients’ scores on the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale—a standardized diagnostic test administered by mental health specialists—after treatment with ALKS-5461.
