Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and KAI Pharmaceuticals today announced an agreement under which Amgen will acquire KAI, a privately held pharmaceutical company based in South San Francisco.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) has joined the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) to fund collective drug research aimed at bringing new, more effective medicines to market faster. The SGC is based at the Universities of Toronto, Canada, and Oxford, England.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) today sent a second letter to shareholders of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) urging them to tender their shares into Roche's increased offer and vote for Roche's independent director nominees and other proposals at the 2012 Illumina annual meeting to be held on 18 April 2012.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) released the following statement in response to the announcement by Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ: ILMN) that its Board of Directors has recommended that shareholders not tender their shares to Roche's increased offer.

UCB announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Neupro® (rotigotine transdermal system) for the treatment of the signs and symptoms of advanced stage idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and as a treatment for moderate-to-severe primary Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS).

Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and AstraZeneca Plc, announced an agreement to jointly develop and commercialize five monoclonal antibodies from Amgen's clinical inflammation portfolio (AMG 139, AMG 157, AMG 181, AMG 557 and brodalumab (AMG 827)).

Novartis and the Broad Institute have developed a cancer cell line encyclopedia that catalogues the genetic and molecular profiles of almost 1,000 human cancer cell lines used in drug research and development. Results of the collaboration, published in the journal Nature, may allow scientists around the world to use this information to improve cancer clinical trial design and further cancer research.