its $2 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. Two months ago, Auris raised $220 million to commercialize a robot cleared by the FDA for diagnosing and treating lung cancers.
—New York-based Attune Pharmaceuticals raised $23 million from RTW Investments, RA Capital and others to continue developing an oral treatment for the rare genetic disease hereditary angioedema.
—Day Zero Diagnostics, of Boston, raised $8.6 million in Series A financing to back a technology that is meant to be faster than current infection diagnostics.
THUMBS DOWN
—Two years after Eli Lilly (NYSE: [[ticker:LLY]]) received a conditional FDA approval for the cancer drug olaratumab (Lartruvo) in soft tissue sarcoma, the company said the drug failed a post-marketing Phase 3 study needed to keep that approval.
—The AbbVie (NYSE: [[ticker:ABBV]]) drug ibrutinib (Imbruvica), already approved to treat five blood cancers, failed a Phase 3 study in advanced pancreatic cancer.
— Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: [[ticker:BMY]]) pulled a key approval application to use a combination of its approved immunotherapies, nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy), in some patients with newly diagnosed, advanced non-small cell lung cancer. BMS said the FDA is asking for more evidence, in part using the measure of tumor mutational burden, that the combo is truly helping patients live longer. Those results are expected in the first half of this year.
—NantHealth (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NH]]) is in danger of being delisted from the Nasdaq stock market, the Culver City, CA firm revealed last Friday. NantHealth is part of billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s web of cancer-related companies.
—Startup uBiome laid off about 10 percent of its 300 employees. Executives told CNBC the cuts are part of the San Francisco microbiome company’s shift to drug development.
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
—Following a month-long investigation, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:VRTX]]) terminated chief operating officer and interim chief financial officer Ian Smith for unspecified “personal behavior.”
—Paul Streck left Insmed (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INSM]]) for the chief medical officer post at Alder BioPharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALDR]]).
—Eli Lilly executive Andrew Oxtoby jumped to Aimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AIMT]]) to become chief commercial officer.
—Roche named company veteran Alexander Hardy as the new CEO of its Genentech division.
—Philip Hampton, chairman of GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: [[ticker:GSK]]), is stepping down as the company prepares for the split it announced last month.
Frank Vinluan and Ben Fidler contributed to this report.
Image courtesy Caroline Davis2010 via a Creative Commons license.
