March

March 26, 2010: Avid Radiopharmaceuticals and Cardinal Health have announced that more than 100 clinical centres and more than 700 patients have now participated in a Phase 3 clinical trial testing whether Avid’s molecular imaging agent Florbetapir F 18 can detect Alzheimer’s disease in living patients. Florbetapir F 18 (also known as 18F AV-45 and Florbetapir) is used with positron emission tomography (PET) technology to detect beta-amyloid plaque deposits in the brain.

March 26, 2010: Chiral Quest Corporation has recently expanded its technology offering by obtaining a licence to world-class asymmetric ketone hydrogenation technology developed by Professors Noyori and Ikariya. The licence was granted by the Japan Science and Technology Agency and enables Chiral Quest to manufacture a range of valuable chiral alcohols from simple unfunctionalised ketones using diphosphine RuCl2 diamine catalysts based on Chiral Quest’s proprietary TunePhos ligand systems.

March 26, 2010: Aureus Pharma, a provider of knowledge management solutions to accelerate discovery in the life sciences industry, is participating in a €118.2 million project, the Biointelligence R&D programme, designed to promote the use of systemic modeling and simulation tools to exploit biomedical databases to improve research efficiency.

March 26, 2010: The company that bought Procter & Gamble Company’s prescription drug business, Warner Chilcott PLC, has given notice that it plans to close its office at a South-West Ohio facility, affecting 163 workers. The company has informed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Service that its layoffs at the former P&G pharmaceutical site in Mason will begin at the end of May and finish by the end of August. An unspecified number of managers, scientists and other employees will be offered jobs elsewhere.

March 25, 2010: PPD, Inc is launching the PPD Vaccines & Biologics Center of Excellence, a first-in-kind comprehensive network of integrated laboratory services focused specifically on vaccine and biologic drug development. The center augments the company's scientific and biologics drug development expertise with state-of-the-art facilities, processes and instrumentation to help clients realize the highest scientific standards for their programs with a focus on cost efficiencies.

March 25, 2010: MDRNA, Inc has acquired intellectual property for bridged nucleic acids (BNAs) from Valeant Pharmaceuticals North America. BNAs are novel nucleoside analogues in which the flexible ribose sugar is locked into a rigid conformation by a small chemical linker. When included in single- or double-stranded oligonucleotides, the highly stable A-form of RNA or DNA is favoured, resulting in increased thermal stability of a duplex or higher affinity of a single strand for its complementary target, eg messenger RNA. In addition BNAs provide resistance to nuclease degradation.

March 25, 2010: Ipsen and GTx, Inc have expanded their partnership for the development and commercialisation of toremifene 80 mg for the reduction of fractures in men with advanced prostate cancer on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and toremifene 20 mg for the prevention of prostate cancer in high-risk patients with High Grade Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia lesions (HGPIN).

March 25, 2010: Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc has initiated patient screening in a Phase 1 clinical trial of APD916, a novel oral drug candidate discovered by Arena that targets the histamine H3 receptor for the treatment of narcolepsy and cataplexy.

March 24, 2010: Cambrex Corporation has acquired IEP GmbH, a privately held company that is a leader in the field of industrial biocatalysis. IEP is located in Wiesbaden, Germany and offers customised biocatalytic process development and sales of enzymes to the pharmaceutical industry, with the ability to utilise its tool box of over 100 proprietary biocatalytic enzymes. IEP’s ‘bioreduction’ technologies have been successfully used in numerous commercial processes.

March 24, 2010: Marine biotechnology company Aquapharm Biodiscovery has closed a £4.2 million investment from existing investors Aescap Venture, Tate & Lyle Ventures, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and NESTA. In addition, the company has appointed biotech entrepreneur Simon Best as CEO. The current CEO and founder Andrew Mearns Spragg will take up the role of Chief Technical Officer.