Finance, Grants, Deals

Celtic Pharma Holdings, a global private equity group, has launched a new company that will manufacture, register and commercialise products from the companies in its investment portfolio.

Pharnext SAS of France, which is developing new combinations of previously registered medicines, has raised an initial €2.5 million in a new funding round in order to finance the clinical development of a product for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

A Belgian start-up ophthalmology company, Amakem NV, has raised €18 million in a Series A round to progress its lead product for glaucoma into a clinical proof-of-concept study. The round was led by Forbion Capital Partners.

Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA of Lausanne, Switzerland has raised €9.5 million in a Series A round to support development of its implant technology for deep brain stimulation which would complement drug therapy for major neurological disorders.

A new UK spin-out dedicated to the technology of DNA repair has received £6 million in Series A funding from a venture capital syndicate led by Sofinnova Partners. The technology comes from the laboratory of Prof Stephen Jackson.

UK-listed Ark Therapeutics Plc has reported revenue of £0.4 million for the first half of 2011, unchanged from a year as it shifted its business strategy to bio-manufacturing and early-stage research and sold its wound-care business.

Novo A/S and SV Life Sciences have committed £8 million in a Series A round to a new UK ophthalmology company that has a portfolio of preclinical assets which are expected to be developed for diabetic macular edema.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has spun out technology for the treatment of hearing disorders into a new company called Autifony Therapeutics Ltd. The company is receiving £10 million in Series A funding from Imperial Innovations and SV Life Sciences.

Galápagos NV has extended for the third time a drug discovery agreement with Genentech (Roche) that involves the use of a number of technologies to discover new chemical entities against targets defined by the Roche group subsidiary.

Evolva Holding SA has become the latest European company to negotiate a standby equity facility with YA Global, a US-based investment group. The facility amounts to CHF 30 million (€27.1 million) and will extend the company’s cash runway by a year.