EISAI now solely responsible for lemborexant

Eisai today announced that its U.S. subsidiary has bought out  Purdue Pharma L.P.’s rights in the worldwide collaboration for the development and commercialization of lemborexant, an investigational sleep-wake regulation agent being studied for the treatment of multiple sleep-wake disorders, including insomnia and irregular sleep-wake rhythm disorder (ISWRD) in patients with Alzheimer’s Disease. Eisai will through a one-time payment to Purdue, will make Purdue no longer a participant or fund-raiser for the development and commercialization of lemborexant.

Keytruda contributes to Merck’s fortune

A steep increase in the sales of Keytruda has led Merck & Co.’s sales growth a significant raise. The expectation for sales to grow between 4% and 7% have been put forward, a little up from the previous projection of a 2% to 6% increase. Keytruda being the chief contributor has outpaced the Bristol-Myers Squibb’s rival drug Opdivo.

BenevolentAI and AstraZeneca to accelerate Drug Discover using AI

BenevolentAI to accelerate the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning for the development of new treatments for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has inked an agreement with AstraZeneca. The two organization has collaborated to work together by combining AstraZeneca’s genomics, chemistry and clinical data with BenevolentAI’s target identification platform and biomedical knowledge graph.

Exosome focused Codiak Biosciences files for IPO

Codiak BioSciences has filed a prospectus to raise up to USD 86 million in an initial public offering. The Cambridge based company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol CDAK. The initial focus of the company will be targeting of immune cells, including antigen presenting cells, T cells and natural killer cells, monocytes and macrophages, and B lymphocytes, or B cells.