Observers have been expecting uniQure to be sold off as a whole but the Netherlands-based firm has chosen to sell just one asset - EtranaDez - and focus on advancing its Huntington’s disease gene therapy.
The likelihood of a uniQure NV buyout, regularly touted as a takeover target for big pharma, looks to have diminished after the Dutch firm plumped instead for a licensing agreement with blood plasma major CSL Behring for etranacogene dezaparvovec, its gene therapy for patients with hemophilia B.
The deal will see the Amsterdam-headquartered biotech bank a $450m upfront payment and it is eligible to receive up to...
More than 100 biopharma executives and experts told Scrip their predictions for therapeutic area advances in the coming year. The recent commercial success of GLP-1s in diabetes and obesity and their potential in further disease areas fuelled excitement around the metabolic space. Expectations were also positive in neurology following the launch of Leqembi for Alzheimer’s disease in 2023, while the multiple opportunities to improve cancer treatment kept oncology top of the pile overall.
In this week's podcast edition of Five Must-Know Things: Merck & Co. steps into CD19 bispecific space; gene therapy patients rise, but slowly; Madrigal’s Rezdiffra plans; Korean biopharma financing recovering?; and approvals to watch out for in Q3.
Bluebird, Vertex and Sarepta are starting to see some commercial gene therapy traction and expect momentum to pick up in the second half, while hemophilia remains a challenging area.
After 10 years of promised investment following its Nobel Prize for iPS cell research, Japan is cautiously narrowing regulations around the conditional approval of cell therapies and cutting some reimbursement prices. Commercial success remains mixed and some products have been withdrawn from the market.
