Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

More on CoStim, the immuno-oncology company NVS just acquired for an undisclosed price:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/02/18/novartis-buys-cambridge-startup-costim-making-major-play-cancer-immunotherapies/3BDI4MNvYiBT9YZsq7qNxN/story.html

Novartis is one of a number of big pharmaceutical companies exploring immunotherapies, which treat disease by spurring, enhancing, or turning off the body’s immune response. Working with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania, Novartis’s Cambridge-based scientists are removing a type of white blood cells known as T cells from cancer patients, genetically engineering them to combat cancer, and then reintroducing them.

Bill Sellers, global head of oncology at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, said the drugs CoStim is developing — drugs that help T cells block cancer signals without having to remove them — will give the drug maker another research approach.

I.e. CoStim’s approach is an alternative to CAR-T.