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.
Wilson Therapeutics AB, a Swedish company owned by venture capital firms, is to make an initial public offering of its shares on Nasdaq Stockholm in order to take the company’s copper removal product for Wilson’s disease through Phase 3 and registration and to the market by 2020.
Bispecific, which is the term given to a molecule that binds to two different antigen, has largely been associated with therapeutic antibodies. But research has also been underway to discover whether the same concept can be applied to small molecules.
Galapagos NV and AbbVie Inc have raised the stakes in their bid to overtake Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc in cystic fibrosis with plans to start human trials in 2017 of a new triple combination therapy for the disease.
Sanofi SA is to team up with Recursion Pharmaceuticals LLC of the US to discover new uses for drugs in its clinical-stage portfolio that target rare diseases. The deal positions Sanofi to play a bigger role in treating rare diseases at a time when competition in the sector is increasing.
Vernalis Plc has conditionally raised £40 million with a share placement that will enable it to get a series of cough-cold drugs onto the US market and advance its plans to become a sustainably profitable specialty pharmaceutical company in the future.
Sanofi SA said it would solicit Medivation Inc’s shareholders directly after the US biotech’s board of directors unanimously rejected the French company’s unsolicited takeover bid of $52.50 per share as substantially undervaluing the company.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc has increased its exposure to bi-specific antibodies through the signing of a second research collaboration with Zymeworks Inc of Canada under which it will have an option to develop and commercialise multiple drugs across different therapeutic areas.
Sanofi SA has disclosed that it is making a $9.3 billion, non-binding bid for Medivation Inc of California, US which has at least two cancer products in mid-to-late stage development and a product for prostate cancer that it is marketing jointly with Astellas Pharma Inc of Japan.