> Novartis stock is poised to rise as the company's pipeline of new drugs is one of the most promising in the industry, Barron's business weekly said Sunday. Report
> Richard Hughes, co-founder of the investment bank Zeus Capital, has bought UK-based York Pharma from its management. Report
> Vanda Pharmaceuticals posted a wider-than-expected net loss of $12.4 million for the second quarter, or 46 cents a share. Report
> Warner Chilcott said second-quarter profit rose 67 percent on higher sales of birth control, hormone therapy, and dermatology products. Report
> India's second-largest pharma firm, Cipla, is showing signs of more financial stress as its free cash flow goes deeper into negative territory. Report
> APP Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval for its version of Pfizer's Idamycin PFS injection, in three dosage strengths. Release
Biotech News
> Nabi Biopharmaceuticals has struck a deal to sell off another big piece of itself. GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $46 million--$20 million upfront--for its PentaStaph program, a vaccine in development to guard against hospital-acquired staph infection. Report
> Shares of Opexa Therapeutics got a badly needed bump after the biotech announced that it had struck a deal to sell its preclinical stem cell technology to Novartis for $4 million in upfront and technology transfer fees and around $50 million in potential milestone payments. Report
> Cambridge, MA-based startup Acetylon Pharmaceuticals is taking the wraps off a $7.25 million Series A later today as it sets out to zero in on a lead program and demonstrate the effectiveness of a new class of HDAC therapies. Report
> Hard on the heels of Novartis, Sanofi Pasteur has charged into the clinic with a new swine flu vaccine designed to capture a big chunk of a brand new, multibillion-dollar market. Report
Biotech IT News
> Interoperability and integration remain the two big nuts to crack in the automation of clinical trial functions, which holds promise of data efficiencies and cost savings in drug development. Report
> KEM Clinicals is an update of Ariana Pharmas' Knowledge Extraction and Management platform, a decision-support tool for drug researchers. The new version supports clinical development and safety processes. Report
> Content compliance can be achieved in six steps, says Stephen Bergson, executive VP at Virtify. Global standards and regulatory mandates are evolving. Life sciences companies need to prepare to meet them. Report
> Version 7.0 of Genedata's Screener lead-discovery system was unveiled at IBC's Drug Discovery & Development conference in Boston last week. Report
> The iPhone joins Twitter and social networks among the latest ways to find clinical trials. For $0.99, you can search tens of thousands of clinical trials by disease or condition, according to an announcement from trial-matching platform developer Healogica. Report
And Finally... UCLA researchers uncovered a new way to scan brain tumors and predict which ones will be shrunk by the drug Avastin--before the patient ever starts treatment. Release