Finance, Grants, Deals

 AbbVie Inc said that its directors have decided to recommend to its shareholders that its £32 billion bid for Shire Plc be rejected. Shire had no immediate comment.

Shire Plc said that it would prefer to go ahead with its pending £32 billion merger with AbbVie Inc but if the US company decides not to proceed, a break fee of more than one billion pounds would become payable to it.

A newly formed German company, Rigontec GmbH, has found backers for a novel cancer treatment that makes a tumour seem like a viral infection, thereby prompting an attack by the immune system. The treatment involves neither live viruses, nor viral genes, nor particles common in oncolytic viruses, and therefore does not raise safety concerns common to the use of viruses, according to the developers.

Nextech Invest Ltd said that it has raised $40 million in the first closing of its fourth oncology fund but that its target for the final closing remains at $100 million.

In a major expansion of an existing gene-therapy deal, Oxford BioMedica Plc has reached an agreement with Novartis to supply it with greater quantities of lentiviral vector that can be used to gene

A new company which is investigating treatments for conditions ranging from cancer to reperfusion injury has been launched in the UK with £15.5 million in seed capital. The company, Magnus Life Science, is a collaboration with University College London (UCL). 

A UK start-up which is developing a candidate molecule for multiple myeloma has received £1.85 million in seed funding from Imperial Innovations Group Plc. Kesios Therapeutics Ltd was set up to commercialise the research of Guido Franzoso of Imperial College London.

TVM Capital Life Science has raised $201.6 million at the final closing of its latest venture fund drawing on a diverse group of investors from the Business Development Bank of Canada to Eli Lilly and Company.

Forbion Capital Partners and Life Sciences Partners, both based in the Netherlands, have together raised €172 million from investors in order to support companies active in the life sciences. Both venture capital companies were supported by investors in Europe and the US.

Salix Pharmaceuticals Inc and Italy’s Cosmo Pharmaceuticals SpA have ended their plans to merge citing a shift in the political environment toward transactions of the kind being proposed. As a result, Salix will make a $25 million termination payment to Cosmo.