Intercell AG has completed a private placement of its shares, raising €15.2 million from the institutional investor BB Biotech, from Novartis, and from a number of other unidentified healthcare investors. The shares were placed at €2.30 per share.
NicOx SA, which is seeking to build an eye-care business after its non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug for osteoarthritis failed to get regulatory approval, had a profit in the first 2012 quarter due to a milestone from its ophthalmology platform.
Evotec AG and 4-Antibody AG have entered into a strategic collaboration to offer an integrated discovery and development service for companies that are developing antibody therapeutics. Financial terms were not disclosed.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc said that it will take its $13 per share cash offer for Human Genome Sciences Inc directly to shareholders and will not participate in that company’s strategic review. The unsolicited bid is valued at about $2.6 billion.
Like many small biotechnology companies Intercell AG has had to abandon promising projects because they failed in clinical trials. Yet, unlike many other companies Intercell has product revenue. Its vaccine against Japanese encephalitis, Ixiaro/Jespect, had sales of €21.6 million in 2011.
Intercell AG, the Austrian vaccine company, has obtained €25 million in debt and equity financing from BB Biotech AG, a Swiss investor in biotech companies. The financing is being made through a wholly-owned BB Biotech AG subsidiary.
Action Pharma A/S has secured $110 million in cash from Abbott Laboratories Inc for its early-stage compound for the prevention of acute kidney injury associated with major cardiac surgery. The compound, AP214, had positive Phase 2b data.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd, a developer of gene sequencing technology, has raised £31.4 million in new funding in a private placement of its ordinary shares. Nearly all of the funds have been supplied by the company’s existing investors.
A new company dedicated to the discovery of small-molecule immunomodulators to treat cancer has been launched in the Walloon region of Belgium. The company, iTeos Therapeutics SA, has secured €9 million in Series A funding.
Novartis is to significantly expand its Sandoz generics business with the acquisition of Fougera Pharmaceuticals Inc, a US specialty dermatology business with net 2011 sales of $429 million. Novartis is paying $1.53 billion in cash.