The company announced a series B-2 financing of $158m that it plans to use for pivotal Phase II development of TORL-1-23, which it called a first-in-class agent.

As China’s fifth approved CAR-T cell therapy, CARSgen/Huadong’s zevorcabtagene autoleucel is priced at $159,735 for a single infusion. Expanding patient access will become a formidable task for the companies, due to the poor prospects of reimbursement coverage by China’s public medical insurance program. 

Marketing applications for MenABCWY, zolbetuximab, crovalimab, macitentan/tadalafil, Coacillium, mRNA-1345, dasiglucagon and ustekinumab have been submitted to the European Medicines Agency for review.

Astellas says its first approval filing globally for zolbetuximab - in Japan for gastric cancer - came faster than expected, as Scrip takes a look at the latest status of other CLDN18.2-targeting candidates in late clinical trials.