Finance, Grants, Deals

A Dutch venture capital fund with investments in healthcare and technology has led a €10 million Series A financing round for Aidence BV, a company that uses artificial intelligence to improve medical imaging. INKEF Capital headed the round with co-investor Rabo Ventures, alongside existing investors Northzone, HenQ and Health Innovations.

The Roche group has moved into gene therapy and simultaneously strengthened its franchise in haemophilia with the acquisition of Spark Therapeutics Inc, one of a small number of gene therapy companies in the world with a product on the market. The all-cash transaction is valued at approximately $4.3 billion, representing a substantial premium to Spark’s current stock price. Nonetheless, it is below the $8.7 billion that Novartis paid for AveXis Inc and the $9 billion Celgene Corp paid for Juno Therapeutics in 2018 – both gene therapy companies.

Ipsen SA is to acquire the Canadian pharma company Clementia Pharmaceuticals Inc giving it a late-stage drug candidate for two rare bone disorders. The acquisition comes at a time when the French company is enjoying strong demand for its specialist portfolio which includes oncology drugs as well as two products for growth hormone deficiencies.

A venture capital syndicate led by Netherlands-based Life Sciences Partners (LSP) is  providing $180 million to Arvelle Therapeutics GmbH, a recently created Swiss company, which has exclusive rights to develop and commercialise a new epilepsy drug in Europe.

Grey Wolf Therapeutics Ltd, an Oxford, UK based immuno-oncology company, has raised £10 million in a Series A financing round to advance new small molecule drugs for cancer. The financing was provided by Andera Partners (formerly Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners) and Canaan Partners of the US.

Avacta Group Plc, which is developing a new type of protein therapeutic, is to license certain assets to Moderna Therapeutics Inc against a potential therapeutic target which has been part of an ongoing research collaboration between the two companies. In an announcement on 4 February, Avacta said that Moderna has exercised an option to the technology. As a result, it may receive undisclosed payments for reaching future clinical development milestones, as well as royalties on future product sales.

The UK contract research organisation Metrion Biosciences Ltd has entered into a collaboration with LifeArc (formerly Medical Research Council Technology) to discover new drugs in the field of neurology. The goal is to identify selective small molecule modulators of a specific ion channel target which gene association studies have identified as likely to be involved with neurological diseases.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has entered into a cancer collaboration with Merck KGaA of Germany which features a direct challenge to Keytruda’s (pembrolizumab) dominant position in lung cancer. Announced on 5 February, the partnership involves the co-development and commercialisation of the Merck asset M7824 (bintrafusp alfa) which is an investigational bifunctional fusion protein immunotherapy.

Sphere Fluidics Ltd has raised $2 million from investors to accelerate growth and support the sales of its single cell analysis system which is used to recognise biological targets and improve antibody discovery.

The funds were provided by Greenwood Way Capital, Oxford Technology and Innovations EIS Fund and 24Haymarket.

Sphere Fluidics is located in Babraham, Cambridgeshire, UK and Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, US.

The Belgian molecular diagnostics company Biocartis Group NV has raised €55.5 million in a private share placement to support the commercialisation of its molecular diagnostics, particularly for the detection of cancer.

The company’s diagnostics platform uses a real-time polymerase chain reaction system to derive information from biological samples in a wide variety of settings. The company is expanding in oncology and currently has tests supporting the detection of melanoma and colorectal and lung cancers.