Finance, Grants, Deals

Macrophage Pharma Ltd, a two-year old company set up to advance small molecule drugs targeting tumour-associated macrophages, has raised £9 million in Series A finance from specialist oncology investors.

Eternygen GmbH, a privately owned company based in Berlin, has raised €8 million in Series A financing to support the research and development of sodium coupled citrate transporter inhibitors for the potential treatment of a variety of metabolic diseases.

In one of the strongest signs yet that cancer detection is becoming a mainstream investment, Illumina Inc said it has received “indications of interest” from undisclosed investors to supply $1 billion in venture capital to Grail Inc, its diagnostics’ spinout.

NeRRe Therapeutics Ltd, a 2012 spin-out of GlaxoSmithKline Plc, has raised £23 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round to advance its portfolio of neurokinin receptor antagonists. The lead product is being developed for a chronic respiratory condition.

Versant Ventures has raised $400 million for its sixth healthcare fund – enough capital to help finance up to 25 biotechnology companies across the US, Canada and Europe. The new fund, Versant Venture Capital VI, is expected to make its first investment before the end of March.

Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA, a family-controlled pharmaceutical company based in Parma, Italy, has teamed up with Aptuit LLC, a US contract research organisation, to discover new compounds for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a serious, chronic lung disease.

Microbiotica Ltd, a spin-out of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has raised £8 million in start-up capital to research new medicines derived from the microbiome, the collection of bacteria in the human gut that helps regulate human health and disease.

Merus NV of the Netherlands has secured a licensing deal with Incyte Corp around its bispecific antibody technology that will give it both cash to develop its portfolio, and US marketing rights to a future compound should development of the technology be successful.

In a reversal, Actelion and Johnson & Johnson Inc have entered into exclusive negotiations about a possible strategic transactions, the details of which are undisclosed. The two companies broke off discussions on 14 December, with Actelion reportedly sounding out a deal with Sanofi SA.

France-based Valneva SE, which has a portfolio of commercial and development-stage vaccines, has raised €7.5 million through the private placement of its shares with MVM Life Science Partners LLP, a life science investor based in London, UK and Boston, US.