Wilex AG is to receive $19 million upfront as part of a licensing deal with Prometheus Laboratories Inc giving the San Diego-based company exclusive US commercialisation rights to its cancer antibody, Rencarex (girentuximab).
It was an auspicious moment to start a conference. Deborah Harland, partner of SR One, announced at the start of the UK BioTrinity conference on 13 April 2011, that the corporate venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline Plc, had just led a €15 million fundraising for the Austrian antibody company, F-Star GmbH.
Silence Therapeutics Plc is proposing to raise up to £5.5 million through the issue of new shares to institutional investors and directors, and a possible additional £1 million in an open offer, which together would support its RNAi drug development platform.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd announced that it has raised £25 million through a share placement with new and existing investors to support the further development of its DNA sequencing and other technologies.
Novartis generated $3.1 billion in net sales from recently launched products in the 2011 first quarter, a period that was otherwise marked by a flat operating income and a decline in the company’s operating margin.
Privately-held Circassia Ltd of the UK has raised £60 million to be paid over two years from Imperial Innovations Group Plc and other investors in order to finance the development of its T-cell vaccines to treat a range of allergies.
4SC AG has licensed, on an exclusive basis, its investigational pan-histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor for oncology, resminostat, to Yakult Honsha Co Ltd for development and commercialisation in Japan.
F-Star GmbH, the Austrian antibody engineering firm, has raised €15 million from a syndicate of venture capital firms led by SR-One. Other participants were Atlas Venture, Aescap Venture, Novo Ventures, TVM Capital, Merck Serono Ventures and MP Healthcare.
Medivir AB has announced an offer to acquire the Nordic speciality pharmaceutical company, BioPhausia AB, in a cash and share offer that values BioPhausia at about SEK 565 million (€62 million). The offer was announced on 11 April 2011.
Venture-capital backed Heptares Therapeutics Ltd of the UK has received £1.7 million upfront in a collaboration deal with the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company to discover drugs for central nervous system disorders focused on a GPCR target.