Sofinnova Partners, which was founded in 1972 as France’s first venture capital firm, has raised €300 million for its eighth life science fund bringing the total amount of money under management to €1.5 billion. Two thirds of the new funds will be invested in European companies.
A UK spinout company, Kesios Therapeutics Ltd, has obtained £19 million in Series A financing to develop therapies targeting a complex that is downstream from a protein implicated in many cancers. The lead candidate is for multiple myeloma.
Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding AG has raised CHF 54.8 million (€50.38 million) in a private placement of its shares with investors in Switzerland and abroad to advance its portfolio of specialty medicines led by a treatment for a rare eye disease.
Geneva, Switzerland-based ObsEva SA has raised CHF 60 million (€54.87 million) in a Series B financing round to advance its portfolio of products that treat reproductive problems in women ranging from preterm labour to endometriosis.
Following news in the UK in early November that a one-year-old baby girl with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL ) has been put into remission by UCART19, an unapproved therapy that required special permission to use, Laboratoires Servier acquired exclusive worldwide rights to the product and promptly did a deal with Pfizer Inc for the drug’s potential commercialisation.
A new venture capital company with financial backing from the European Investment Fund (EIF) has been launched in Belgium to support start-up and early-stage life science companies in Europe. V-Bio Ventures has raised €63 million in the first closing of its first fund.
Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy of Finland has raised £10 million gross on the AIM market in London in order to help finance a Phase 3 trial of its agent for acute respiratory distress syndrome Traumakine, a recombinant human interferon beta-1a product.
Kuros Biosurgery AG, a Swiss developer of biomaterials, has topped up a CHF 15 million (€13.89 million) financing round that closed for the first time in August, with an additional CHF 5 million from undisclosed investors.
A syndicate of investors co-led by New Science Ventures LLC of the US is to provide €8 million to Ovizio Imaging Systems, a Belgium-based medical device company that has technology for the real-time three dimensional imaging of living cells.
Germany-based Curetis BV has raised €40 million in an initial public offering of its shares on the Euronext exchanges in Amsterdam and Brussels for the commercialisation of its molecular diagnostic system for serious infectious diseases.