Finance, Grants, Deals

Forbion Capital Partners of the Netherlands has raised €270 million at the first close of its fourth life science fund, exceeding the target amount of €250 million.

The Wellcome Trust is to use its expertise in life science and financial muscle to launch a new investment fund that will enable high-risk research projects to develop quickly and move towards commercialisation.

London, UK-based Abingworth has raised $315 million for its twelfth life science fund bringing the total amount of funds under management to over $1.2 billion.

A consortium of predominately European investors is providing €47 million to Dynacure SAS of France to bring its candidate antisense oligonucleotide drug into the clinic for the treatment of patients with centronuclear myopathies.

Novartis is proposing to spin off its Alcon division into a separately listed eye care devices company leaving it to focus on pharmaceutical discovery and development.

UK-based NodThera Ltd has raised £28 million in Series A financing to develop small molecule drugs to treat diseases driven by chronic inflammation.

Belgium-based iTeos Therapeutics SA has raised $75 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round to advance two of its immunotherapy candidates into the clinic and open a new office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

Emulate Inc, the developer of micro-engineered chips that mimic that activity of live human organs, has raised $36 million in a Series C financing round to finance the expansion of its organs-on-chips technology that is being used by the pharma industry to test candidate drugs for saf

Roche and Foundation Medicine Inc reached a definitive merger agreement on 19 June enabling the Swiss multinational to acquire shares of the US molecular information company that it does not already own.

A short 18 months after its launch as a new company, Microbiotica Ltd has entered into a multi-year collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche group, to discover, develop and commercialise biomarkers, targets and medicines for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).