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.
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.