in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer did not meet its primary endpoint. The layoffs in September came after bad news from its COMET-1 trial effectively ended the company’s prostate cancer program. In the first quarter of 2015, Exelixis will report Phase 3 results of cabozantinib in liver and kidney cancer.
—Danish biotech Ascendis Pharma, which has top executives based in the San Francisco Bay Area, raised a $60 million Series D financing to push its growth hormone candidate into late-stage clinical trials and its treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension into the clinic. New investors Sofinnova Ventures, OrbiMed and Vivo Capital led the round.
—San Ramon, CA-based HealthTell said it has received a small-business grant from the National Institutes of Health to evaluate the company’s technology, which uses a patient’s blood sample, in the diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common form of brain cancer.
—The approved cancer immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) from Merck (NYSE: [[ticker:MRK]]) was the subject of a University of California, Los Angeles, study, where researchers delved into the biology behind patient response (or nonresponse) to the melanoma treatment. The researchers used the immunoSeq assay from Adaptive Biotechnologies of Seattle and said they identified a key biomarker that could help stratify patients. The study was published in Nature last week.
Xconomy San Diego editor Bruce Bigelow contributed to this report.
Photo of San Diego Bay courtesy of David Purcell, used with permission.
