Greatbatch Inc and Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA of Switzerland are to collaborate on a new device for deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treating Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor. Simultaneously the US company is to lead a Series C financing round for Aleva.
Index Ventures, which started as a small Swiss venture capital company in 1996 with a pilot fund of $17 million and grew into a global growth investor with nearly $6 billion under management, is splitting off its life science business from the rest of the company into an independent organisation that has been incorporated as Medicxi Ventures (UK) LLP.
Enyo Pharma SAS of France has secured €22 million in a Series A funding round to accelerate development of its lead treatment for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection which targets interactions in the cell that enable the virus to replicate.
Mission Therapeutics Ltd of the UK has raised £60 million in a series C financing round to support the development of enzyme inhibitors that are thought to have the potential of targeting difficult-to-treat cancers as well as neurodegenerative diseases.
Inivata Ltd, which is developing a blood test for detecting cancer from circulating tumour DNA, has raised £31.5 million in a Series A funding round supported by the investment group Imperial Innovations Group Plc.
Vasopharm GmbH, a privately held German company focused on cerebrovascular diseases, has raised €20 million from venture capital companies to finance Phase 3 development of its lead product for traumatic brain injury VAS203.
Abingworth LLP, the London-based investment group, has created a new fund to invest in late-stage life science assets that are being developed by two of its portfolio companies under contract with the pharmaceutical industry.
Netherlands-based Mucosis BV has secured a £2.77 million award from the Wellcome Trust to take an experimental vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) into the clinic. RSV is a virus that causes lung and airway infections in infants and young children.
The neuroscience sector took a further step towards consolidation on 19 January with an agreed bid by Acorda Therapeutics Inc for Finland’s Biotie Therapies Oyj which has a late-stage compound for Parkinson’s disease in the clinic and royalty revenue from a product for alcohol dependence. The deal is valued at about $363 million.
Argenx NV, which engineers antibodies originating in llamas, has announced plans to sell about €16 million worth of its shares to funds managed by Federated Investors Inc of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, one of the US’s largest funds with more than $350 billion under management.