Thousand Oaks-based ImmunGene, a cancer treatment firm led by a former Amgen scientist, has raised $9 million from Ally Bridge Group, an investment group with ties to Hong Kong.
ImmunGene’s so-called antibody-cytokine fusion technology could help improve the cancer-cell targeting in therapies. President and CEO Sanjay D. Khare was formerly the scientific director at Amgen, the biotech giant. Prior to the funding, ImmunGene had received several hundred thousand dollars in federal research grants.
Antibody technologies hold promise for creating cancer treatments that do less damage to healthy cells. Molecules are crafted to mimic the body’s own immune system and bind to specific defects in cancer cells.
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill supported by Thousand Oaks-based Amgen and other biotechnology companies that would have made it more difficult for pharmacists to dispense so-called biosimilars, the biotech industry’s analogue to generic pharmaceuticals.
Senate Bill 598, approved by both houses of the legislature, looked mostly like a procedural change to state’s pharmacy laws. If it passed, the bill would have allowed pharmacists to fill prescriptions with biosimilars that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deems “interchangeable” with brand-name counterparts.
Sansum Clinic’s planned merger with Cottage Health System remains on track despite the possibility that the partial government shutdown could delay an anti-trust review of one of the region’s biggest health care deals. And the biggest physician group in Santa Barbara County says it hopes to be able to join the Covered California insurance exchange Read More →
Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara has received a $2.25 million federal grant for diabetes research. The three-year funding comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is for Sansum to continue its work on diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic research. Sansum’s research focuses specifically on Type 1 diabetes and the creation Read More →
Santa Paula-based Thomas Aquinas College has joined with several other Catholic educational institutions in a lawsuit against the federal government over a mandate that the school provide coverage for contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit was filed in Washington D.C. The college’s co-plaintiffs are the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, The Catholic University Read More →
As it nears the takeoff point, Obamacare gets an “A” for increased access but just average grades for implementation, so far. That was the consensus view among a panel of three regional health care experts at the kickoff on Sept. 17 for California Lutheran University’s Corporate Leader’s breakfast series. All of the panelists gave the Read More →
As it nears the takeoff point, Obamacare gets an “A” for increased access but just average grades for implementation, so far. That was the consensus view among a panel of health care experts at the kickoff on Sept. 17 for California Lutheran University’s Corporate Leader’s Breakfast series. Dr. Matteo Dinolfo of UCLA Health gave the Read More →