Isomorphic Labs Ltd, with headquarters in London and global business offices in Lausanne, Switzerland and Cambridge, US, announced funding of $2.1 billion on 12 May, said to be the second largest equity funding round for a company since the start of the biotechnology industry. The Series B round comes only a year after the company raised $600 million for its activities, the company’s first external financing since its launch in 2021.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co has signalled a commitment to artificial intelligence with a strategic agreement with Anthropic PBC to deploy the AI tool Claude across the company’s research, clinical development, manufacturing, commercial and corporate functions. Announced on 20 May, the agreement will make the technology available to more than 30,000 BMS employees. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
A UK company with an ambition to develop a new class of therapeutics based on laboratory grown red blood cells has raised £3.2 million in seed funding. The financing was announced on 7 May and awarded to Scarlet Therapeutics Ltd which was founded by the University of Bristol, UK, professors Ash Toye and Jan Frayne. The company’s technology platform is based on engineered red blood cells with a potential for delivering therapeutic proteins in vivo to humans. The proteins remain inside the red blood cell membrane and therefore are not recognised by the immune system.
ERS Genomics Ltd, which manages licensing agreements for the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool, is to supply the technology to Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services Ltd in India, enabling the company to integrate gene editing into its drug discovery activities. Aurigene is a global contract research, development and manufacturing organisation. The deal was announced on 13 May.
Eli Lilly and Co’s agreement on 20 April to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics Inc in a deal worth up to $7 billion puts the company in place to exploit the emerging field of in vivo CAR-T therapy which has been described by analysts as a way to achieve therapeutic value without a complex production step. This compares with the traditional ex vivo approach in which T cells are extracted from a patient, modified in a laboratory, and then reinfused into the patient.
Bristol Myers Squibb Co announced a drug discovery and development agreement with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals Co Ltd on 12 May which is expected to yield 13 new products across the oncology, haematology, and immunology sectors and be commercialised across the globe. The deal comes as Hengrui is expanding its market presence outside China and BMS is taking steps to generate new revenue in response to a loss of patent protection on some important medicines.
A panel of life science investors raised concerns at the AngloNordic conference in London on 23 April that early-stage biotech companies are struggling to raise finance. Stephen Hansen, director of biopharma intelligence at BioCentury, cited data showing pre-clinical companies made up 41-42% of financings in 2021/22, but just 25% in 2025. He worried that a vital part of the biotech sector was being neglected in favour of clinical stage ventures, saying: "Somebody's got to be making companies....
UCB SA announced on 3 May that it has signed an agreement to acquire Candid Therapeutics Inc of San Diego, US, broadening its portfolio to include biologics targeting autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The Belgium-based biopharma company already has marketed products for epilepsy, plaque psoriasis, and Crohn’s disease. The acquisition will add preclinical and early clinical-stage products to UCB’s portfolio, the most advanced of which are bispecific T cell engagers. These are antibodies that can bind T cells to tumour cells to kill cancers.
Seaport Therapeutics Inc, a spin-out of Boston, US-based PureTech Health Plc, priced an initial public offering of its shares on 1 May yielding $254.9 million. The IPO comes only two years after the company’s launch and follows positive early clinical data for its lead product SPT-300 which is an oral prodrug of a neurosteroid that plays a key role in mood regulation. The drug has progressed to Phase 2b and is being investigated as a treatment for major depressive disorder.
Jeito Capital closed its second private equity fund, Jeito II, on 8 April with a call to the pharmaceutical industry to meet the challenge of the patent cliff by producing more innovative new medicines for patients. Significant new financing will be available for companies that do this following the close of Jeito II which raised €1 billion, above expectations and about double the size of Jeito I which attracted €534 million in 2021. The new fund is expected to supply capital to 15 to 20 companies with larger amounts than in the past.