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South African Aspen Pharmacare (APN) (https://www.aspenpharma.com/) officially opened its new high containment facility in Port Elizabeth. The 23,000m² facility has been audited by the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority and the German regulator, Landesamt für soziale Dienste des Landes Schleswig-Holstein (LAsD) both of which have granted the requested approval. At full capacity, the high containment facility is expected to produce approximately 3.6 billion tablets annually and package some 3 million bottles per month. The establishment of a new Training Academy is also ongoing in order to train employees.

The acquisition of Midazolam Nasal Spray (USL261) from Proximagen allowed UCB (https://www.ucb.com/) to pursue the consolidation of its epilepsy portfolio. The product is a nasally administered investigational midazolam formulation intended as a rescue treatment of acute repetitive seizures (ARS) in patients with epilepsy, which has completed Phase 3 clinical development. USL2611 already granted orphan drug and fast track designation by the FDA and is ready to be filed as a New Drug Application (NDA) in the course of 2018.

At the end of two years of profound restructuring and disinvestures, Valeant (http://www.valeant.com/) will change its name to Bausch Health Companies Inc. starting July 2018. According to the company, all entities that have separate established brands will continue to operate under the corporate umbrella using their existing names. As part of the name change, the Company will roll out a new corporate brand identity in July 2018, which will include new imagery and web site, and will trade under a new symbol, BHC.

The licensing agreement between Zymeworks and Daiichi Sankyo (https://www.daiichi-sankyo.ch/de/), started in 2016, has been expanded to allow Daiichi Sankyo to acquire licenses to Azymetric and Efect technology platforms in order to develop two additional bispecific antibody therapeutics. Zymeworks will receive an upfront technology access fee of US$18 million and may receive up to US$466.7 million in potential clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments.

Japanese’s pharma company Astellas Pharma https://www.astellas.com/announced its “Strategic Plan 2018”, comprehensive of the restructuring of operations in Japan and of the introduction of an early retirement incentive program. The goal is to optimise the organisational capabilities of the company, according to which all operations will be restructured, including R&D and Sales & Marketing, and its group companies in Japan.

Takeda https://www.takeda.com/closed the agreement to sell its majority shareholding of 51.34% in Guangdong Techpool Bio-Pharma, the Chinese company specialised in the research, discovery and marketing of urinary protein biopharmaceuticals and production of biopharmaceuticals in critical care. The shareholding is to be acquired in an all-cash by Takeda’s joint venture partner in Techpool: Shanghai Pharmaceutical Holding Co. Ltd. and a fund managed by SFund International Investment Fund Management Limited.

The new integrated Asian Veterinary Research & Development (R&D) Center of Boehringer Ingelheim (https://careers.boehringer-ingelheim.com/), the second largest animal health company, has been officially inaugurated in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park. The center is a consequence of the merger between Boehringer and Merial and is the largest of its kind established by a multinational pharmaceutical company in China.

The US Department of Justice finally granted on May 29th Bayer the conditional approval for the acquisition of Monsanto (http://monsanto/). The merger will give rise to the leading player in agricuture. According to the DOJ’s conditional approval, the integration of Monsanto into Bayer can take place as soon as the divestments to BASF have been accomplished. This is expected to be in approximately two months, said Bayer, which expects to receive any outstanding approvals required for completing the transaction very shortly.

Eli Lilly (https://www.lilly.com/) closed the agreement to acquire AurKa Pharma. This last one was established by TVM Capital Life Science to develop the Aurora kinase A inhibitor AK-01 for oncology indications; the compound was originally discovered at Lilly and represents a potential first-in-class asset, as Aurora kinases are believed to play a crucial role in cellular division by controlling chromosomal segregation. After the completion of phase 1 trials, new studies will seek to determine if the selectivity profile of AK-01 can improve efficacy while limiting toxicity risks to a manageable level.

The PGT Healthcare (https://us.pg.com/) partnership between Teva and Procter & Gamble has been terminated after seven years. The collaboration was focused on the joint market of OTC medicines; the separation should become effective since July 1, 2018. The decision, according to Teva, is due to no longer closely aligned priorities and strategies of the two partners. Each company will now take back its own brand and product assets to re-establish independent OTC businesses.