As a rule, getting a drug on the market turns a biotech startup from a buck bonfire into a cash cow—or at least a cash calf. But rules tend to get broken. Just ask GTC Biotherapeutics. In mid-2006, European drug regulators approved the Framingham, MA-based company’s first medicine, ATryn, a protein for blocking risky blood … Continue reading “GTC Biotherapeutics, Racing Against Time to Prove the Worth of “Pharming””
Author: David Stipp
GTC Biotherapeutics Drug Passes Clinical Milestone, Helping Blaze the Trail for U.S. “Pharming”
GTC Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GTCB]]), which bioengineers goats to secrete drugs in their milk, announced late yesterday that its groundbreaking medicine for a rare blood-clotting disorder cleared the main hurdle in a pivotal U.S. trial. The advance paves the way for the Framingham, MA-based company to seek FDA approval for the drug around mid-year, potentially making … Continue reading “GTC Biotherapeutics Drug Passes Clinical Milestone, Helping Blaze the Trail for U.S. “Pharming””
ImmunoGen’s Mitch Sayare on What Sustains a Company—and its CEO—Through Decades of Starting Up
Call it the 27-year-old startup: ImmunoGen, one of biotech’s oldest companies, has yet to get a drug on the market more than a quarter century after its formation in 1981. This year may mark a long-awaited turning point for the Cambridge, MA-based company, though. If all goes well, compelling efficacy data will emerge from ongoing … Continue reading “ImmunoGen’s Mitch Sayare on What Sustains a Company—and its CEO—Through Decades of Starting Up”
Ischemix is Stepping Out of the Shadows to Confront Cardiology’s Dirty Little Secret
No doctors thwart the Reaper more often than cardiologists, who routinely pull heart-attack victims back from the brink with artery-opening procedures. But their god-like powers suddenly fade after coronary arteries are unblocked. In fact, much of the harm from heart attacks occurs at that point due to “reperfusion injury,” which occurs when blood flow is … Continue reading “Ischemix is Stepping Out of the Shadows to Confront Cardiology’s Dirty Little Secret”
Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals: Fish-Oil Mystery Solved, Blockbuster Drugs to Follow?
If you haven’t considered eating more fish or taking fish-oil pills by now, you’re probably very young, just in from Mars, or both. The case for the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, the compounds of interest in fish oil, rests on thousands of studies over the past two decades, and the list of ills … Continue reading “Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals: Fish-Oil Mystery Solved, Blockbuster Drugs to Follow?”
The Boston-China Biopharma Connection
The Great Bubble is dead and gone, but like Elvis it’s still occasionally sighted. Daytraders, for instance, could have sworn it was gyrating across their screens when WuXi PharmaTech recently went public. The Shanghai-based company leaped onto the Big Board on August 9 after pricing its shares at $14 each. The stock quickly rose by … Continue reading “The Boston-China Biopharma Connection”
Can ToleRx Escape the Autoimmunity-Drug-Development Deathtrap?
“Like does not like like that is obnoxious.” Poet Marianne Moore wasn’t thinking of autoimmune diseases when she penned this line but it memorably captures the strife behind them—when our immune cells see their cellular kin as obnoxious, all hell breaks loose. Still, our immune systems are teachable. Early in life they learn to tolerate … Continue reading “Can ToleRx Escape the Autoimmunity-Drug-Development Deathtrap?”
Biotech Takes on Toxic Drugs
Nothing robs pharma officials of more sleep than unexpected toxicity linked to one of their companies’ medicines. Recently they’ve lost more shuteye than ever as reports on cardiac risks of widely-used diabetes drugs have fanned public anxiety about drug hazards. Now Congress is moving to intensify FDA surveillance of ill effects possibly caused by medicines. … Continue reading “Biotech Takes on Toxic Drugs”
Aveo’s Better Mousetraps for Cancer Drugs
Oncology researchers are fond of saying that if you’re a mouse with cancer, they’ve found drugs that can cure you. Scientists at Cambridge-based Aveo Pharmaceuticals have even better news: They’ve developed mice with tumors that don’t always respond well to anticancer drugs. That heralds an important advance because it means that cancers in Aveo’s bioengineered … Continue reading “Aveo’s Better Mousetraps for Cancer Drugs”