Shire Plc is to divest Dermagraft, a bio-engineered skin substitute, as part of a strategic review set in motion by the company’s chief executive Flemming Ornskov. The Dermagraft assets are being sold to Organogenesis Inc in exchange for future milestone payments.
JLL/Delta Dutch Newco BV, a company set up to combine the assets of Canada’s Patheon Inc and the pharmaceutical division of Royal DSM of the Netherlands, is raising $500 million with a private placement of eight-year notes in New York.
Further data from a previously-reported Phase 1/2 study of ProSavin, a gene therapy for patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, confirms the treatment’s favourable safety profile. Developed by Oxford BioMedica Plc, ProSavin is delivered in a lentiviral vector.
Sanofi SA is initiating a new approach to antibiotic development with a decision to team up with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany to research naturally occurring chemical and biological compounds for their potential as medicines.
Venture capital-backed 4-Antibody AG of Switzerland is to be acquired by Agenus Inc of the US in a deal intended to exploit the Swiss company’s technology for producing antibodies that target checkpoint molecules, key regulators of the immune system.
Alkermes Plc is raising $250 million from a placement of its shares with the Invesco Perpetual Income Fund and the Invesco Perpetual High Income Fund. The placement comes three months after the company’s product for depression received ‘fast-track’ designation from the FDA.
Sanofi SA will significantly increase its exposure to the RNAi class of medicines under a plan to take a 12% stake in Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The equity deal, valued at $700 million, is linked to rights to Alnylam’s portfolio of rare-disease medicines.
The Netherlands-based holding company, Qiagen NV, has broadened its strategic partnership with Exosome Diagnostics Inc of the US in order to develop blood-based molecular diagnostics for certain cancer indications.
The US Food and Drug Administration has given an accelerated approval for a new treatment for metastatic melanoma that combines two licenced GlaxoSmithKline Plc medicines which block signalling in different sites of the same molecular pathway.
Avillion LLP, a company set up by two venture capital groups to undertake late-stage clinical development on behalf of third parties, has signed a deal with Pfizer Inc to conduct a Phase 3 trial of the US company’s leukaemia drug bosutinib.