A spin-out from the University of Oxford, UK, has raised £67 million from a Series A financing to advance clinical development of a new monoclonal antibody for treating essential thrombocythaemia (ET), a rare blood cancer. Alethio Therapeutics Ltd is building a portfolio of medicines to treat myeloproliferative neoplasms of which ET is one.
Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has broadened a two-year oncology agreement with Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd of Hong Kong, enabling the two parties to explore treatments based on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and T cell engagers. The companies launched their first collaboration in 2024 when BI agreed to supply Sino, now known as the SBP Group, with a small group of experimental drugs for further development.
AstraZeneca Plc plans to generate up to $1.5 billion in savings over the next three years by redeploying existing assets to invest in newer technologies and in the pipeline. The plan was announced on 30 October alongside the company’s third quarter results which showed a revenue increase of 7% to $16.2 billion for the three-month period. Operating profit was $4.4 billion, up by 22%. The company expects revenue for the year to increase by a mid-to-high single-digit percentage.
On 23 October, US-based Bristol Myers Squibb Co disclosed that a patient with highly active relapsing multiple sclerosis died of septic pneumonia following the data cutoff in a Phase 1 trial. The study involved the treatment of patients with autoimmune neurological diseases with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy targeting CD19 on B cells.
AM-Pharma BV of the Netherlands is being acquired by a specialist healthcare company in the UK in a deal that will see its enzyme replacement therapy for hypophosphatasia (HPP) advance to Phase 2. The buyer is Ambrose Healthcare Ltd which already has two rare disease programmes in its portfolio and is positioning itself for more. This comes at a time when the US Food and Drug Administration is updating its guidance for the developers of drugs for rare diseases. Current estimates put the number of these diseases at 7,000 to 10,000 globally.
Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd announced a second antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) deal with the Roche Group on 19 October, giving the Chinese company an upfront payment of $400 million. The two companies did not disclose the specific cancers that they will be investigating. They did however say that Hansoh will lead early development of the programmes up to the completion of global Phase 1a clinical trials. After this, Roche will be responsible for further development worldwide – excluding the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
The European Medicines Agency has taken steps to innovate its regulatory procedures with two pilot programmes that will, on the one hand, align with the US Food and Drug Administration’s plans to reduce animal studies in drug development and on the other, to conduct structured dialogues with companies on the requirements for marketing authorisation applications. In the first case, the goal is to modernise pre-clinical tests for new drugs. In the second, it is to create space for more interactions between the agency and companies prior to the submission of formal applications.
OMass Therapeutics Ltd, a 2016 spin-out from the University of Oxford, has raised $310 million in a Series C financing to support development of its lead programme for congenital adrenal hyperplasia and ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome. The funding was announced on 15 October.
AstraZeneca Plc is to explore the use of artificial intelligence in drug development and expand its oncology portfolio under two new collaborations with US companies. The first, announced on 28 September, is an equity investment and clinical collaboration with Summit Therapeutics Inc under which the companies will investigate combination therapies of a bispecific antibody from Summit with antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) from AstraZeneca.
A new platform company focused on the delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to cells was launched on 13 October with the goal of addressing one of the main limitations of genetic medicines – reaching tissues beyond the liver. Undecimal Bio Ltd is a spin-out of Eleven Therapeutics (UK) Ltd, a synthetic medicines company. It has raised $18 million in seed financing from a syndicate co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital of the UK. Its initial therapeutic focus is renovascular disease.