Alexion, newly headquartered in Boston’s Seaport District after its move from New Haven, announced in late September that it is acquiring Syntimmune, a clinical-stage biotech developing antibody therapeutics targeting the neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn). Syntimmune’s SYNT001 – a humanized monoclonal antibody that inhibits the interaction of FcRn with Immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgG immune complexes […]

Bedford-based Stoke Therapeutics has announced it has completed a $90 million Series B financing to advance its pipeline of antisense oligonucleotide medicines for Dravet Syndrome and other severe genetic diseases. Stoke, which launched in 2018 with a $40 million Series A investment, has identified thousands of genes that could be addressed by its proprietary TANGO […]

Enterome, a clinical-stage French biotech with its U.S. headquarters in Cambridge, has entered into a global licensing, co-development and co-promotion agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical. Enterome is developing innovative therapies to treat microbiome-associated diseases with a focus on auto-immune disease and cancer. The agreement covers Enterome’s lead investigational drug candidate EB8018 in patients with Crohn’s disease, […]

Bain Capital and Pfizer have announced the creation of Cerevel Therapeutics, a new biopharmaceutical company focused on developing drug candidates to treat disorders of the central nervous system (CNS) to be headquartered in the greater Boston area. Pfizer is contributing a portfolio of pre-commercial neuroscience assets to Cerevel, which include three clinical-stage compounds and several […]

[The following post has been excerpted from “For Journalists: Statement and Background on the CRISPR Patent Decision” by Lee McGuire, Chief Communications Officer, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.] A federal panel has again confirmed that the patents granted by USPTO to the Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard concerning CRISPR editing of eukaryotic genomes do […]

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has announced the European Commission (EC) has granted marketing authorization for Onpattro (patisiran) for the treatment of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis in adults with stage 1 or stage 2 polyneuropathy. The approval was granted less than three weeks after Alnylam won FDA approval for Onpattro. The drug is based on Nobel Prize-winning science […]

The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio) today released its 2018 Industry Snapshot report, which shows that Massachusetts biotechs dominated the IPO market in 2017, accounting for 48% of all US-based biotech IPOs, up from 30% in 2016. 2018 has already outpaced 2017 in terms of total Massachusetts IPOs at 15, which accounts for nearly 40% of […]

RNAi (RNA interference) is a natural cellular process of gene silencing that represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug development today. Its discovery has been heralded as “a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so,” and was recognized with the award of the 2006 Nobel […]

RNAi therapeutics company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has announced that the FDA has approved Onpattro (patisiran) lipid complex injection, a RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutic for the treatment of the polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated (hATTR) amyloidosis in adults. Onpattro is the first and only FDA-approved treatment for this indication. “Alnylam was founded on the vision of harnessing the […]