Finance, Grants, Deals

Up to £50 million is expected to be made available for British life science following the setting up of a new fund that will seek to identify early-stage technologies with global commercialistion potential.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has taken control of its publicly-listed consumer healthcare subsidiary in India in a transaction valued at about £568 million. As a consequence, it now owns 72.5% of GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, up from 43.2% previously.

4-Antibody AG of Switzerland and its research partner, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, have entered into a collaboration with Recepta Biopharma SA of Brazil to develop three antibody products for cancer.

The management of large pharmaceutical companies often struggle in deciding which products to bring forward into the expensive final stage of development. However, two venture capital companies have developed a way of ‘underwriting’ so that pharma can have more choices.

Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc has agreed to pay $150 million upfront for Uteron Pharma SA, a Belgian producer of healthcare products for women. The deal also includes up to $155 million in potential future milestone payments.

Cytos Biotechnology Ltd said that it is reclaiming a vaccine asset that had been licensed to Novartis for the treatment of nicotine addiction following the failure of a Phase 2 trial. The product is a therapeutic vaccine.

Lophius Biosciences GmbH has raised nearly €4 million from existing shareholders and new shareholders to finance development of diagnostics based on T-cell technology.

Life Technologies Corp of the US has announced the acquisition of privately-owned BAC BV of the Netherlands which specialises in the development and manufacture of protein purification products. The deal will expand the US company’s capabilities in bioprocessing.

Prexton Therapeutics SA of Geneva Switzerland has negotiated an exclusive option for a series of positive allosteric modulator drugs targeting Parkinson’s disease with the goal of progressing them into clinical development. The agreement is with Domain Therapeutics SA of France.

Galápagos NV of Belgium will be adding structure-based drug discovery to its stable of technologies with the acquisition of Cangenix Ltd, a UK start-up that was created by scientists from the former Pfizer Inc subsidiary in Sandwich UK.