Although SRF813 isn’t likely to reach the clinic until 2021, GSK likes cell therapy’s monotherapy and combination potential. Lilly bids $880m to acquire neurodegenerative cell therapy firm Prevail.

FDA's Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee may help provide guidance in the increasingly competitive therapeutic space of postoperative ocular pain.

XOMA (US) has appointed James Neal vice-president of business development. He was most recently acting chief executive officer at Entelos, which was acquired Iconix Biosciences, a privately held company where Mr Neal was CEO.

Drug developers can now tap into an array of new preclinical technologies including some that give them the ability to interrogate compounds in a broad biological context-a systems biology approach. In this issue, we profile four start-ups with technologies designed to predict drugs' efficacy: Champions Biotechnology, Cytox, Immuneering and Rhenovia.