@FierceBiotech: Orexigen crashes after FDA demands pre-approval Contrave study. Item | Follow @FierceBiotech
@JohnCFierce: Just got off the phone with Pfizer worldwide R&D chief Mikael Dolsten. Pfizer is looking for central Cambridge facility to consolidate R&D. Follow @JohnCFierce
> With big plans for its new cancer drug SGN-35, Seattle Genetics has raised $155 million through a stock sale. That money will be needed to launch the drug and expand the company if everything works as planned at the FDA. Report
> Faced with the looming threat of a late-stage trial failure, Chelsea Therapeutics is opting to change the trial design. The drug Northera is being tested for symptomatic neurogenic orthostatic hypotension associated with Parkinson's disease. Now Chelsea wants to break the study into two parts, with one study looking at the drug's ability to prevent falls among Parkinson's patients, a secondary goal of the original trial which had been tracking well in Phase III. Article
> Shares of Icagen jumped this morning after the developer announced that the FDA has removed a clinical hold on ICA-105665, its lead drug for epilepsy. The hold was placed on the trial after one patient experienced a serious side effect. Story
> BioNet Holding is pumping 24 million euros into Scil Proteins, a German biotech preparing to launch Phase I studies for its two top programs. Scil release
> Nuclea Biotechnologies, based in Pittsfield, MA, is partnering with the Boston Medical Center to research and develop biomarkers for patients with breast and prostate cancers. Story
> An eight-year study of cancer patients has yielded an important biomarker that can detect if cancer has spread or if it will recur, according to a team at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Hong Kong. Item
> Vector, the blog for Children's Hospital Boston, tells us about Edward Smith, director of pediatric cerebrovascular surgery, who is on a quest to find easily detectable biomarkers to diagnose and assess a brain tumor's status. His solution is very simple: a urine test. Report
And Finally... While the overall death rate for cancer continues to drop among African Americans, the group continues to have higher death rates and shorter survival of any racial and ethnic group in the U.S. for most cancers. Release