Industry update: the latest developments in the field of therapeutic delivery, April 2019

Abstract

April 2019 was perhaps remarkable for the amount of industry news about gene therapy, and notably the announcement by a global contract development and manufacturing organization, Catalent, that it was creating a capability in gene therapy product development and manufacturing through its acquisition of Paragon Bioservices, Inc (MD, USA). This move followed just a few weeks after another similar major contract development and manufacturing organization gene therapy acquisition. There was other encouraging gene and cell therapy news reported from AveXis (IL, USA), Ajinomoto Bio-Pharma (CA, USA), Kiadis Pharma (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Fibrocell (PA, USA), Autolus Therapeutics plc (London, UK), ReNeuron (Surrey, England) and Kite Pharma (CA, USA). Also, there was plenty of therapeutic delivery technology innovation announced, including Calixar’s (Lyon, France) membrane protein stabilization drug discovery technology, the Eli Lilly (IN, USA)/Avidity Biosciences LLC (CA, USA) deal around antibody oligonucleotide conjugates, ViiV Healthcare’s regulatory filing for its long-acting anti-HIV-1 intramuscular injection, Marinomed Biotech’s (Vienna, Austria) solubilization technology and an EU approval filing for Novo Nordisk’s (Bagsværd, Denmark) oral delivery formulation of glucagon-like peptide-1 analog semaglutide. Diseases and treatment approaches that currently figure strongly in many biotech and big pharma pipelines and portfolios, notably nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and immuno-oncology, were as ever in the news, along with a number of rare disease therapies. As always, information sources employed to provide the materials used in compiling this update included company press releases, conference news and other news websites.