Bukwang and subsidiary Contera have become the latest to fail to progress a novel Parkinson's therapy to late-stage trials after a Phase II miss, although several other Korean firms remain in the race for the challenging indication, albeit mainly in Phase I-II.

The intellectual property, also held by Eureka, may offer a new pathway for treating relapsed MM patients. Sorrento inks cancer partnerships with Karolinska Institutet and Mayo Clinic.

Ensysce Biosciences Inc. is developing a nanoscaled delivery system that might work for many types of potential drugs but will first be applied to siRNAs, a class of drug candidates that inspired tremendous excitement a decade ago, but has since been abandoned by many of its former champions. The Houston, TX-based start-up believes it can harness single-walled carbon nanotubes to deliver siRNAs that will block or “silence” the genetic instructions encoded by messenger RNA, and thereby stop targeted genes from producing disease-related protein.

A series of recent and anticipated events is drawing attention to interleukin-17 and related cytokines – a set of immunological drug targets of long-standing interest to large and small companies. The current crop of big-company candidates are biologics and may prove too harsh for all but the most severe immunological conditions, leaving room for start-ups developing small molecules.