While You Were Watching Your Sugar

Or maybe instead, while you were skipping sessions at ADA to get sugar-coated beignets at Cafe Du Monde. Either or. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

In any case we've got your weekend wrap-up below, a few morsels of general industry news sprinkled with the sweet taste of clinical diabetes announcements. Or you know, the other way around.

While you were should have been sweeping the Dodgers ...

• Aileron, a biotech developing a new class of molecules it calls 'stapled peptides', raised a $40 million Series D. What's particularly noteworthy is the participation by SR One (GSK's corp. VC arm), which led the round, as well as Lilly Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund and Roche Venture Fund. For the kind of analysis that predicts deals like this, see this May START-UP feature by Ellen Licking.
  
• ADA: From late on Friday, a new GSK-sponsored study, RECORD, says Avandia doesn't up heart-attack risk. Not everyone is sold. Hmmm, we wonder who might have a comment. According to a WSJ report: “The Record trial is seriously flawed,” Nissen said, adding that there weren’t enough patients who remained in the study to say conclusively that the drug doesn’t pose a high risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems.
  
• ADA: GLP-1 candidate from GSK, Syncria, better than Byetta in Phase II trial. Good enough for a major Phase III program, anyway. Reuters has the wrap up here.
  
• ADA: Meanwhile, Novo's liraglutide was beating up on Sanofi's Amaryl. Details on that two-year study here.
• ADA: Hi, we're from Boehringer Ingelheim. Did we mention we're in diabetes now?
• The NYT Magazine on the challenge of passing health care reform.
• EHA: ADA wasn't the only game in town this weekend, depending of course on what town we're talking about. At the European Hematology Assn meeting in Berlin Calistoga Pharma touted new results on its PI3k inhibitor.
  

image by flickr user jasonrowland.org used under a creative commons license