By Connor Lynch Pictured: Person holding a cell phone in front of computer with stock data/iStock Just two days after releasing late-breaking Phase I/II data for one of its flagship drugs, biopharma Kura Oncology on Tuesday announced plans for a $100 million underwritten public offering. The company intends to use the public offering to fund the development of its three candidate drugs, in invest pipeline research and development, and provide a source of general working capital. According to first-quarter 2023 financial results, Kura has roughly $406 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments, which the company expects will fund current operations until the fourth quarter of 2025. The pre-market share value slipped by 8.1% to $11.7 after the public offering. The offering’s bookrunning managers are BofA Securities, Jefferies and SVB Securities. The lead managers are Cantor and BTIG, while JMP Securities—a Citizens Company—and H.C. Wainwright, are the co-managers. The announcement ...
Megan Brooks Mounting evidence supports that chronic environmental exposure to low levels of lead, cadmium, and arsenic contribute significantly to cardiovascular disease (CVD), the American Heart Association (AHA) says in a new scientific statement. “In reality, identifying a new type of cardiovascular risk factor leads to more questions than answers,” Gervasio A. Lamas, MD, chair of the statement writing group, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology. “For the most part, as cardiologists, we are used to risk factors, we can manage with antihypertensives, statins, weight loss, exercise, and avoidance of smoking. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of toxic metals and their multiple sources increases the complexity of potential treatment,” said Lamas, chairman of medicine and chief of the Columbia University Division of Cardiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida. The statement addressing contaminant metals as CV risk factors was published online June 12 in the Journal of the American Heart ...
Dive Brief U.S. consumers doubled their use of wearable healthcare devices, including smartwatches, wearable monitors and fitness trackers, between 2020 and 2021, according to a new survey from AnalyticsIQ. Among wearable monitors, blood pressure devices were the most popular, used by 59% of survey respondents, followed by sleep monitors (21%) and ECG monitors (11%). Biosensors such as glucose monitors, hormone monitors, fall detectors and respiratory monitors were used by 8% of consumers in the survey, followed by use of smart clothing items at 6%. The wearable biosensors niche alone grew from $150 million globally in 2016 to $25 billion in 2021, the data analytics firm said. Dive Insight The use and variety of consumer health technology devices has increased dramatically over the past two decades. Scientists at AnalyticsIQ developed a survey to find out how people are incorporating health tech into their lives, asking about 8,000 Americans across the country ...
Digital Science, a technology company serving stakeholders across the research ecosystem, is pleased to announce that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has chosen Altmetric and Dimensions from Digital Science’s flagship products to support its belief that research has the power to change lives. CIHR – the Government of Canada’s health research investment agency, which funds world-class research across the country – has signed a single-year deal to utilize Altmetric Explorer for Institutions and Dimensions Analytics (with API), which enables customers to monitor and report on the online activity surrounding research published by an institution, while also benefiting from access to the full Altmetric database. Using Digital Science’s products and tools, CIHR will be able to monitor the online activity surrounding academic research, including the ability to browse by author, group or department for the institution, benchmark against peer organizations, report on the outcomes of outreach activity, and integrate ...
Novartis has entered into an agreement to acquire Chinook Therapeutics for approximately $3.5bn, marking a notable expansion to the Swiss drugmaker’s renal pipeline. The deal grants Novartis access to the US biopharma’s two late-stage candidates in development for Immunoglobulin A Nephropathy (IgAN), a rare and progressive kidney disease that mostly affects young adults. IgAN, which Novartis says currently lacks targeted treatment options, affects up to 21 people per million per year in the US, with a higher rate among Asian populations. The most advanced of the two assets is atrasentan, an oral endothelin A receptor antagonist that Chinook bought from AbbVie at the beginning of 2020. The candidate is currently in phase 3 development for IgAN, with a readout from the study expected in the fourth quarter of this year. The second candidate, zigakibart (BION-1301), is a subcutaneously administered anti-APRIL monoclonal antibody that is expected to enter phase 3 development ...
Dive Brief Pulsed field ablation (PFA) devices from Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic are a threat to Abbott’s $1.9 billion electrophysiology business, according to analysts at Stifel. Abbott is taking a “wait-and-see” approach to PFA, advancing a later generation device in the belief that the first wave of products will have shortcomings that limit adoption, the report said. The analysts see “some logic” to Abbott’s position but expect the company to suffer share losses in the coming years. The pressure could ramp up quickly, with the analysts warning products that make up around 90% of Abbott’s electrophysiology sales could be affected by the switch to PFA by 2025. Dive Insight Abbott has a PFA device in development but it is years behind the front-runners, with first in-human use planned for this year. Based on that, the analysts estimate the device, named Volt, could win approval in the U.S. ...
Researchers led by Christi Gendron at the University of Michigan, US, have found the link between death perception and reduced aging in flies. Their new study, published June 13th in the open access journal PLOS Biology shows that a specific group of brain cells in the fly, called R2 and R4 neurons, are activated when flies encounter other dead flies, and that this increased activity leads to more rapid aging. Aging is a complex process that can be affected by both genetics and the environment. While we know that perceptual experiences can affect aging, how this happens is still mostly a mystery. One example is the effect of “death perception” in fruit flies. Previously, the group at the University of Michigan reported that when fruit flies see other dead fruit flies, they experience advanced aging, and that this depends on a type of serotonin receptor. In their new follow-up study, ...
Reviewed by Lily Ramsey, LLM Women and men who experience migraine headaches also carry an elevated risk of having an ischemic stroke, but women alone may carry an additional risk of heart attack and hemorrhagic stroke, according to a new study led by Cecilia Hvitfeldt Fuglsang of Aarhus University, Denmark publishing June 13th in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. People diagnosed with migraine are believed to have a higher risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke before the age of 60. Previous studies have suggested that the increased risk of ischemic stroke – when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel to the brain – mostly affects young women. It was unclear whether women with migraine also carry a higher risk of heart attack and hemorrhagic stroke – when an artery in the brain bursts – compared to men, which was the aim of the new research. Hvitfeldt ...
By Neha Mathur Reviewed by Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc. In a recent article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers reveal significant cost savings when generic oncology drugs are purchased through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC) as compared to Medicare. Study: Projected Savings for Generic Oncology Drugs Purchased via Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company Versus in Medicare. Image Credit: Celil Kirnapci / Shutterstock.com Background There is an urgent need to reduce spending across the system in a dynamic healthcare landscape like that of the United States, which is possible with the equal participation of patients and sponsors. The Medicare program contributes a substantial proportion of prescription drug spending in the U.S., which was already high and continues to increase over time. In fact, in 2019, Medicare and its beneficiaries accounted for 27.2% of the fee-for-service program. Although oncology prescription drugs constituted only 0.6% of overall sales ...
By Tristan Manalac Pictured: Syringe pulling vaccine from a vial / Adobe Stock, weyo Data from a Phase III study showed Valneva’s chikungunya vaccine candidate VLA1553 can elicit a strong immune response and could be an effective protective option against the mosquito-borne disease caused by the chikungunya virus, the French company announced Tuesday. This news follows a February 2023 report from Fierce Biotech revealing that Merck had dropped out of the chikungunya race. Citing a company spokesperson, Fierce noted that the decision to discontinue the chikungunya program was part of the company’s “routine pipeline prioritization.” Published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, Valneva’s double-blinded and randomized Phase III study enrolled more than 4,100 participants who were given either VLA1553 or placebo. In the per-protocol analysis, the investigational shot induced neutralizing antibody titers above the protective threshold in 263 of 266 participants with evaluable findings. This corresponded to a 28-day ...
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