Top 5 News Stories 7/30-8/3

1) Inspiration Bio one step closer to commercialization

Inspiration Biopharmaceuticals Inc. has reached several milestones – some operational, and some personal- since it moved the business from Laguna Niguel, Calif. to Massachusetts less than a year ago.

Link

2) Scivax opens Woburn sales office

Kawasaki, Japan-based Scivax, which develops 3-D cell culture plates for the drug discovery market, is opening a sales office in Woburn, the company announced yesterday.

Link

3) Rare Diseases: 5 Recent Reasons to Cheer

“On Sunday morning, July 21, I faced a room of people from families with Leber congenital amaurosis, an inherited blindness caused by mutations in any of at least 18 genes. It was the final session of the Foundation for Retinal Research’s bi-annual LCA family conference, and I was there to discuss the history of gene therapy. But I zapped through that quickly, because the future is much more intriguing.”

Link

4) Pfizer Rheumatoid Arthritis Drug Beats Older Treatment in Study

Pfizer Inc. said its rheumatoid arthritis treatment tofacitinib, one of the company’s leading experimental drugs, was more effective than an older treatment in a large-scale study. The drug met its primary end-point in the study and no new side effects were found, Pfizer said in a statement.

Link

5) Millennium to expand footprint with Cambridge lease

Cancer drug developer Millennium has agreed to lease about 230,000 square feet of office and lab space and become the anchor tenant in a new mixed-use building planned for 300 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, a move that would significantly expand the biotechnology company’s local footprint while extending the University Park at MIT life-sciences cluster.

Link