MorphoSys AG has joined forces with the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas to discover and develop potential antibody therapies against cancer. The German company will use its technology platform to generate antibodies against jointly selected targets.
The Roche Group subsidiary Genentech has extended a discovery alliance with Evotec AG that began in May 2010 for another three years to 2019 in order to continue work in identifying new small molecule drugs against targets identified by Genentech. Financial details were not disclosed.
Netherlands-based oncology developer Merus has raised $55 million in an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq market, less than originally planned. Life Sciences Partners, the company’s venture capital backer, said the sums were raised in “challenging market conditions.”
Paris-based Neovacs SA and Boston-based Stellar Biotechnologies Inc have agreed to form a new company, Neostell SAS, to manufacture and sell conjugated vaccines to third parties worldwide as well as to support Neovacs’ proprietary therapeutic vaccine pipeline.
Novimmune SA, a Swiss antibody developer, has raised a second round of CHF 30 million ($31 million) from its existing shareholders after obtained the same amount from them in January.
The $9 billion agreed merger of Quintiles Transnational Holdings Inc and IMS Health Holdings Inc is the latest, and one of the most ambitious, attempts by industry to use advances in information technology to bring down the cost of drug development.
The France-based diagnostics company Novacyt SA is poised to complete the acquisition of Primerdesign Ltd of the UK giving it new technology for analysing DNA as well as a commercial presence in more than 100 countries.
Medherant Ltd, a spin out of the University of Warwick, has raised follow-on capital of £250,000 from the investment group Mercia Fund Management to continue development of a transparent adhesive patch that can deliver prolonged doses of a drug directly through the skin.
BTG Ltd, which supplies sophisticated equipment to the hospital market, is acquiring Galil Medical Inc, a vendor of cryoablation equipment for destroying diseased tissue by freezing it. The consideration will be $84.5 million in cash and future milestone and regulatory payments of up to $25.5 million.
Ergomed Plc, a listed UK clinical-trial services organisation, is raising between £9 and £13 million with a share placement that will help finance the takeover of Haemostatix Ltd, which is developing products for inducing rapid blood clotting.