Finance, Grants, Deals

Sweden-based Redwood Pharma AB has raised SEK 6.6 million (€710,000) in a private equity placement to fund the development of a new hydrogel product for chronic dry eye disease in post-menopausal women.

UK-based Oxford BioMedica Plc is raising £8.1 million with a fully underwritten share placement to finance the expansion of its lentiviral vector manufacturing capacity and advance the clinical development of its gene therapy portfolio.

Shield Therapeutics Plc has raised £32.5 million in an initial public offering of shares on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in the wake of a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency for its drug for iron deficiency anaemia.

Imperial Innovations Group Plc has led a £5 million Series A funding round for the Cambridge University spin-out Aqdot Ltd, a specialist chemical company that has developed a chemical encapsulation technology for use in consumer products.

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.