Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb to fund study of Portola's blood-thinner antidote

Portola CEO Bill Lis.

Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc. will get an undisclosed amount of cash in a deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Pfizer Inc. to test its experimental treatment to reverse the effect of blood-thinning Factor Xa inhibitor drugs, the company said Thursday.

The antidote, called PRT-4445, is supposed to reverse the anticoagulation work of so-called Factor Xa inhibitors, including Eliquis from Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and South San Francisco-based Portola's betrixaban.

Fran Heller to lead Bristol-Myers Squibb business development

Former Exelixis Inc. business development chief Fran Heller will join Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. as senior vice president of business development, the company said Friday.

FDA approves Gilead's four-in-one HIV pill

Gilead Sciences Inc.'s four-in-one drug balm for HIV patients won Food and Drug Administration approval Monday. The pill, which Foster City-based Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) will sell as Stribild, includes a new drug, called elvitegravir, and a new booster that allows elvitegravir to be given once a day. It also has two ingredients that the company already markets. Analysts have pegged Stribild as a potential $4 billion-a-year blockbuster.

BMS, Prosetta ink HIV drug research deal

Prosetta Antiviral's Vishwanath Lingappa.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Prosetta Antiviral Inc. -- one of San Francisco's oldest biotech companies -- signed a multi-year drug discovery and development deal that initially targets the AIDS virus, the companies said Tuesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Prosetta will receive an upfront payment and research funding from Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY). Prosetta also will be eligible for milestone payments and royalties on worldwide sales, if any drugs emerge from the deal.

Gilead asks FDA to approve new HIV drug booster

An important boosting agent in Gilead Sciences Inc.'s experimental four-in-one Quad pill for HIV patients was formally submitted for approval Thursday to the Food and Drug Administration.

Foster City-based Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) said it asked the FDA to approve cobicistat, a boosting agent that increases blood levels of some protease inhibitors, including elvitegravir. The booster allows elvitegravir, which Gilead submitted Wednesday for approval, to be given once a day as part of the Quad pill.

Gladstone, Bristol-Myers Squibb strike Alzheimer's research deal

The Gladstone Institutes will work with drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in a basic research partnership to identify and validate Alzheimer’s disease targets.
Exact financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) will fund Gladstone efforts to find targets that affect dysfunction of Tau, a protein that may help regulate the activity of brain cells.

Gilead HIV booster passes Phase III test

An experimental HIV therapy booster from Gilead Sciences Inc. — a key part of Gilead’s experimental four-in-one, once-a-day Quad pill — met the goal of a Phase III trial, the company said Monday.
The booster, named cobicistat, showed in the 96-week study that it was at least on par with ritonvair, or Norvir, from Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) said.

Gilead, Bristol-Myers Squibb ink deal for HIV-fighting booster

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will develop a new HIV treatment combining its protease inhibitor Reyataz and Gilead Sciences Inc.’s new boosting agent cobicistat, according to a deal announced Wednesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, except that Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) will pay a royalty based on annual net sales of the product.
Foster City-based Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) already has been studying Reyataz, or atazanavir, and cobicistat, a booster that increases the levels of certain HIV-fighting medicines, in Phase II and Phase III studies.

Roots of new melanoma drugs run deep in Bay Area

Zelboraf, the melanoma treatment approved Wednesday by the FDA, is a great Bay Area story — developed by Berkeley’s Plexxikon Inc., marketed by South San Francisco’s Genentech Inc. and accelerated by a diagnostic test developed by Pleasanton’s Roche Molecular Diagnostics.
You can’t get much more Bay Area than that.
But Zelboraf isn’t the only new melanoma drug with a Bay Area connection. Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Yervoy, approved by the Food and Drug in March, largely owes its development to research done by Dr. James Allison and colleagues in the mid-1990s at the University of California, Berkeley.

Exelixis business development boss leaves company

Exelixis Inc.’s head of business development, Fran Heller, left the drug developer Monday, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday.
The news of Heller’s departure as executive vice president of business development comes on the heels of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s decision earlier this month to return a cancer drug to Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL). While the company said it would not continue research on that drug, XL-218, it has concentrated on another cancer drug that BMS gave back a year ago, cabozantinib, which the company could partner with a larger drug developer.

Exelixis lands on its feet again with another cancer drug giveback

Leave it to Exelixis Inc. to (again) turn a negative into a positive.
Britol-Myers Squibb will return an early-stage cancer drug, which could have translated into $315 million in bio bucks plus sales performance milestones and double-digit royalties, to South San Francisco-based Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL).
Exelixis — now concentrating on cabozantinib, a drug that BMS gave back little more than a year ago — said it has no plans to further research and development or eventually commercialize the drug.
A bummer? Yeah, probably. A lost opportunity? Maybe. A total loss? No.

Bristol-Myers Squibb returns another cancer drug to Exelixis

Bristol-Myers Squibb is returning rights to an experimental cancer drug to Exelixis Inc. — the second time it has sent a drug back to the South San Francisco biotech company in little more than a year.