GamaMabs Pharma, a French biotech company focused on gynaecological cancers, has raised €15 million in a Series B financing round to take its lead product into first human studies. The round was led by the new investor Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners.
Immunovia AB, a Swedish diagnostic company, has reported the results of a retrospective study of blood samples from patients with pancreatic cancer which was able to differentiate patients with early cancer from controls with 96% accuracy.
Seventure Partners of France, one of the earliest investors in companies making microbiome-based products, has closed its microbiome-oriented healthcare fund at €160 million, up from €120 million previously largely due to the participation of Novartis Pharma AG.
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Sanofi SA have become the latest pharmaceutical companies to swap assets in a bid to strengthen their respective market positions in veterinary medicines and consumer healthcare products.
A candidate gene therapy for haemophilia B developed by scientists at University College London (UCL) was so effective in a Phase 1/2 study that Syncona LLP has decided to start a new company to commercialise it.
Sygnis AG, which makes products for DNA amplification and sequencing, has raised €5.6 million in a private equity placement while strengthening its balance sheet with a debt-for-equity swap with its major shareholder Genetrix SL of Spain.
Erytech Pharma SA, a France-based oncology company that is developing treatments to starve cancer cells of nutrients, has raised €24.5 million in a share placement with qualified investors in the US and Europe.
Sofinnova Partners, which was founded in 1972 as France’s first venture capital firm, has raised €300 million for its eighth life science fund bringing the total amount of money under management to €1.5 billion. Two thirds of the new funds will be invested in European companies.
Darmstadt, Germany-based Merck KGaA has dropped the candidate oncology drug evofosfamide following two Phase 3 studies that failed to show efficacy in patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma and advanced pancreatic cancer.
Eli Lilly and Company is discontinuing development of the basal insulin peglispro (BIL), a candidate treatment for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, following increases in a key liver enzyme in patients enrolled in Phase 3 trials of the drug.