Novartis is buying privately held drugmaker Ziarco Group for an undisclosed sum to gain access to its investigational eczema medicine, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant said on Friday.
The acquisition adds UK-based Ziarco’s once-daily oral H4 receptor antagonist, ZPL389, that is being developed for the chronic, itchy inflammatory skin condition to Novartis’s existing portfolio of approved and investigational dermatological drugs.
“There is an unmet need for innovative, effective and safe oral treatment options for people living with eczema,” Vasant Narasimhan, Novartis’s head of drug development and chief medical officer, said in a statement.
By John Miller
Source: Reuters
The companies will explore opportunities to apply Flagship’s innovative bioplatforms – an ecosystem that currently comprises 41 companies – to scientific challenges in disease areas within cardiometabolic and rare diseases and initiate research programmes based on these.
BD is expanding its long-running partnership with the blood collection company Babson Diagnostics. The two companies have been working together since 2019 on a device that can gather small volumes of blood from the capillaries in the fingertip without requiring any specialized training, and beginning with a focus on supporting primary care in retail settings.
Wednesday, Australian biotech CSL said (PDF) the regulatory review of its $11.7 billion acquisition of Switzerland’s Vifor Pharma will take “a few more months,” suggesting it won’t be able to close the transaction by June 2022 as previously expected.
