GamaMabs Pharma, a French biotech company focused on gynaecological cancers, has raised €15 million in a Series B financing round to take its lead product into first human studies. The round was led by the new investor Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners.
Seventure Partners of France, one of the earliest investors in companies making microbiome-based products, has closed its microbiome-oriented healthcare fund at €160 million, up from €120 million previously largely due to the participation of Novartis Pharma AG.
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH and Sanofi SA have become the latest pharmaceutical companies to swap assets in a bid to strengthen their respective market positions in veterinary medicines and consumer healthcare products.
A candidate gene therapy for haemophilia B developed by scientists at University College London (UCL) was so effective in a Phase 1/2 study that Syncona LLP has decided to start a new company to commercialise it.
Sygnis AG, which makes products for DNA amplification and sequencing, has raised €5.6 million in a private equity placement while strengthening its balance sheet with a debt-for-equity swap with its major shareholder Genetrix SL of Spain.
Erytech Pharma SA, a France-based oncology company that is developing treatments to starve cancer cells of nutrients, has raised €24.5 million in a share placement with qualified investors in the US and Europe.
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.