Company News

Exonate Ltd, a spin-out of the University of Nottingham, has raised further money from the venture capital community to support its candidate eye drop for treating retinal neovascular diseases. The latest round raised £1.5 million for a total to date of £9 million.

The UK company is supported by Uniseed of Australia, the University of Bristol Enterprise Fund, Angel CoFund and a number of other investors.

Sanofi SA is investing €80 million in BioNTech AG equity, substantially increasing its commitment to the German company’s messenger RNA technology. Simultaneously the two companies have agreed to co-develop the first product from a research collaboration dating from 2015.

In the first major pharma transaction of 2019, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co has announced plans to acquire Celgene Corp in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $74 billion. The deal will combine the two companies’ oncology and inflammation franchises along with a large development portfolio featuring cell-based gene therapies for cancer.

The Belgium-based cell therapy company Promethera Biosciences SA has raised €10 million from the Japanese conglomerate Itochu Corp as part of an ongoing Series D financing round to advance its portfolio of experimental medicines for chronic liver failure, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and fibrosis.

As part of the financing, Tajio Enoki, head of the medical business team in the energy and chemicals unit of Itochu, will join Promethera’s Board of Directors.

Novartis is proposing to acquire the contract manufacturer CellforCure of France in order to boost capacity for the manufacture of cell and gene therapies. Financial terms of the proposed transaction were not disclosed.

Evox Therapeutics Ltd is to use its exosome-based technology to work on prospective delivery approaches for an anti-infective drug from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Separately, the company also appointed Edwin Moses, the former Ablynx chief executive, as non-executive chairman of its board of directors.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new indication for Lynparza (olaparib) for the maintenance treatment of adults with suspected germline BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer.

Less than a year after buying out Novartis’ interest in a joint consumer products venture, GlaxoSmithKline Plc has reached an agreement with Pfizer Inc to set up a new consumer products venture with expected sales of £9.8 billion.

Novo Holdings A/S is providing $15 million in Series A financing for the launch of a new San Diego, US-based company with plans to build a portfolio of drugs targeting serious inflammatory diseases. Aristea Therapeutics Inc will use the funds to start a Phase 2 trial of a small molecule anti-inflammatory drug in-licensed from AstraZeneca Plc called RIST4721.

In connection with the financing, Tiba Aynechi and Ken Harrison from Novo Ventures (US) Inc, which is owned by Novo Holdings, will join Aristea’s Board of Directors.

Summit Therapeutics Plc plans to raise $25 million in a private share placement that will finance a Phase 3 clinical programme of the investigational antibiotic ridinilazole for the treatment of Clostridium difficile.

The funds will also support a product to treat gonorrhoea which is poised to enter Phase 1 and a group of discovery assets targeting pathogens (ESKAPE pathogens) that are responsible for the majority of nosocomial infections in the world.