Finance, Grants, Deals

GW Pharmaceuticals Plc has raised $87.9 million in a follow-on offering of an earlier initial public offering on Nasdaq. The funds will be used to support the clinical development of a childhood epilepsy product.

A fund operated by Gilde Healthcare Partners BV has acquired a majority interest in Viroclinics Biosciences BV, a 2001 spin-out from the virology department at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Lombard Medical Technologies Plc is planning to delist its shares in London and make an initial public offering on the Nasdaq market in New York. The company said this will give it access to a larger pool of investors familiar with its market.

Nextech Invest Ltd of Switzerland has led a $25 million Series B financing round for a young US biotech company that is developing kinase inhibitors for genomically-defined cancer subsets. Blueprint Medicines Corp is located in Cambridge, Mass.

AstraZeneca Plc is to take full control of a portfolio of diabetes assets being managed jointly with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) in order to strengthen its position in the market. The upfront payment to BMS is $2.7 billion with potential milestones of $1.4 billion.

The board of Algeta ASA is recommending that shareholders agree to a takeover offer from Bayer that values the company at NOK 362 ($58.7 per share) for a total of $2.9 billion. Bayer is Algeta’s partner for Xofigo, a recently approved radiopharmaceutical.

AmpliPhi BioSciences Corp, which is developing new antibacterial therapies, has reached an agreement with funders to raise $18 million in a private share placement to support development of therapies that target Gram-negative bacterial infections.

The proposed takeover of Elan Corporation Plc by Perrigo Company, a large US wholesaler of healthcare products and generic prescription drugs, has been approved by the Irish High Court paving the way for the completion of the deal on 18 December.

H. Lundbeck A/S and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co Ltd have decided to advance an anti-amyloid beta vaccine, currently in preclinical development, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The focus is on early inhibition of amyloid beta.

Biocartis NV has joined forces with the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) to develop a new diagnostic test for cancer designed to detect biomarkers of microsatellite instability for several cancers, in particular colorectal cancer.