BioSante Pharmaceuticals alerted investors this morning to its plan to move forward after the colossal failure of its late-stage trials for its female libido gel last month. To save cash, the company said it's cutting 21 full-time employees or contractors, about a quarter of its total workforce, and is hunting for in-licensing, merger and acquisition deals.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — An investigational drug called regorafenib slowed the progression of tumors and lengthened the lives of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, an international phase III clinical trial found. The findings were presented today at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in San Francisco by Mayo Clinic oncologist Axel Grothey, M.D., principal investigator of the trial in the United States.

Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ARIA)’s experimental drug ponatinib spurred a positive response in 47 percent of chronic myeloid leukemia patients, a pivotal study the company said may help the medicine gain approval as a new therapy for people without treatment options.

PCI-32765 applies molecularly aimed attack to disease usually treated with chemotherapy combinations

SAN DIEGO - A new, targeted approach to treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia has produced durable remissions in a Phase I/II clinical trial for patients with relapsed or resistant disease, investigators report at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

Treatment with dexpramipexole – a novel drug believed to prevent dysfunction of mitochondria, the subcellular structures that provide most of a cell's energy – appears to slow symptom progression in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Promising results of a phase 2 trial of dexpramipexole are receiving advance online publication in Nature Medicine. Some preliminary results of the study were presented at the 2009 International Symposium on ALS/MND and the 2010 American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.

Rivaroxaban Used in Combination with Standard Therapy Reduced Cardiovascular Death by Over 30%

Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. (J&JPRD) announced today that adding oral rivaroxaban to standard antiplatelet therapy significantly reduced the composite primary efficacy endpoint of cardiovascular-related deaths, heart attacks or strokes in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) compared to those receiving standard therapy alone. Results from the pivotal Phase 3 ATLAS ACS 2 TIMI 51 trial presented today at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions and published in the New England Journal of Medicine also showed that rivaroxaban significantly increased rates of major bleeding, but did not create an excess risk of fatal bleeding over standard therapy alone.

An experimental drug called Ocrelizumab has shown promise in a Phase 2 clinical trial involving 220 people with multiple sclerosis (MS), an often debilitating, chronic autoimmune disease that affects an increasing number of people in North America. It usually strikes young adults and is more common in women than in men.

Exelixis has been talking with the FDA for months about reaching an agreement on the design of a pivotal trial for its prostate cancer drug, but now the company has essentially thrown up its hands and decided to push ahead in testing without any formal regulatory deal.

Shares of the company fell more than 30 percent, to $5.36, in after-hours trading following the announcement.

A Phase III study evaluating Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals’ regorafenib (Bay 73-4506) in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) has been unblinded to allow patients in the placebo arm to start receiving the investigational oral multikinase inhibitor. The Correct study is being conducted in 760 mCRC patients whose disease had progressed after approved standard therapy. Patients are randomized to receive either regorafenib plust best supportive care, or placebo plus best supportive care.

Today Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) and Abbott (NYSE: ABT) announced additional results from the SELECT Phase 2b trial, the first of two registrational studies designed to evaluate the investigational compound daclizumab high-yield process (DAC HYP) in people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).