The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug, Praxbind (idarucizumab), that can be used in emergencies to reverse the effects of a blood-thinning medicine that is commonly administered to patients with atrial fibrillation.
Luxendo GmbH, a start-up medical technology company, has raised €6 million in a Series A funding round to commercialise new microscope technology that enables researchers to create high-resolution images of tissue and living organisims.
An undisclosed amount of seed funding has been provided by two UK investors for a start-up gene therapy company that is working on a concept for preventing nerve damage in glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide.
Spark Therapeutics Inc said it plans to seek marketing approval in the US next year for a gene therapy following a Phase 3 trial in which the experimental treatment helped restore vision to patients with an inherited eye disorder.
For more than a year, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has been meeting individually with a number of companies that are developing products for difficult-to-treat diseases to speed the path towards registration. The discussions are non-binding, which means that regulatory approval is not assured. But they give both sides a chance to discuss the requirements of a good clinical programme, including the sort of information that will eventually be needed to show effectiveness in clinical practice.
The Swedish specialty pharmaceutical company Pharmalink AB has raised SEK 100 million (€10.5 million) to prepare for a Phase 3 development programme of its candidate product for primary IgA nephropathy, an inflammatory disease of the kidney.
The Wales Life Science Fund has led a €12 million Series B funding round for drug developer Apitope in order to enable to company to progress its pipeline of peptide-based therapeutics directed at autoimmune and allergic diseases.
Austria-based Nabriva Therapeutics AG has raised $92.25 million gross in an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares on the Nasdaq market to finance development of its portfolio of anti-infective medicines. Leerink Partners LLC and RBC Capital Markets LLC jointly managed the offering.
Replimune Ltd, a UK start-up, has raised $30 million in Series A finance to develop therapeutics based on the use of oncolytic viruses, or viruses that infect and destroy cancer cells. The funding round is being led by Atlas Venture with participation from Forbion Capital Partners and Omega Funds.
Allergy Therapeutics Plc reported strong growth in European sales for the year to 30 June, giving it a platform for the future launch of its candidate short-course vaccine against grass allergy, Pollinex Quattro Grass.