Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical to develop a vaccine to protect against Zika virus infection. It would use different underlying technology than vaccines that have recently begun testing. Takeda hopes to start testing in healthy volunteers in the second half of 2017, a Takeda official told Reuters.
—You Got Your M In My A: Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, the Marlborough, MA-based subsidiary of Japan’s Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, paid $40.50 per share, or $624 million, to acquire Parkinson’s drug developer Cynapsus Therapeutics. Cynapsus has a late-stage experimental drug meant to help Parkinson’s patients manage “off” episodes, when their medications stop working and their symptoms reappear, similar to a therapy Acorda Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ACOR]]) acquired in its $525 million buyout of Civitas Therapeutics in 2014.
—Cambridge-based cancer drug developer Leap Therapeutics is reverse-merging with Israel’s Macrocure (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MCUR]]). The new entity will be majority owned by Leap’s shareholders and should begin trading on the Nasdaq by the end of the year.
—Approvals: The FDA said yes to Novartis’ biosimilar version of etanercept (Enbrel), the blockbuster autoimmune drug sold by Amgen (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMGN]]) and Pfizer (NYSE: [[ticker:PFE]]). The drug, to be sold under the name Erelzi, is the third biosimilar approved by the agency… The FDA gave the nod to Amgen’s blinatumomab (Blincyto) to treat kids with Philadelphia chromosome-negative relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The drug is already approved to treat adults with the same condition.
—Photo of Roger Tsien courtesy of UC San Diego.
—Ben Fidler contributed to this report.
