Finance, Grants, Deals

Cancer Research UK has entered into a clinical development collaboration with UCB SA of Belgium to advance two candidate antibody therapeutics for cancer into the clinic. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.

The deal is one of several involving the UK charity and its division Cancer Research Horizons with institutions and companies across Europe. In November 2022, Cancer Research UK reached an agreement with the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden to validate novel drug targets in cancer.

Bank regulators in the US and UK took further steps on 12 March to protect depositors at Silicon Valley Bank in California and its UK subsidiary following the collapse of the parent company the previous Friday. The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) acted first on 10 March by closing the parent bank after a run on deposits. Concurrently, it created a new banking entity to protect insured depositors. This move protected customers with accounts of up to $250,000 – the US federally insured level – but it did not stop the contagion.

Sanofi SA is to acquire Provention Bio Inc of the US giving it a marketed product, Tzield (teplizumab), that has been shown to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes, as well as a pipeline of prospective therapies for other auto-immune diseases. The France-based multinational will pay $25 per share in cash for the Nasdaq-listed company, representing an equity value of about $2.9 billion. A traditional supplier of insulin, Sanofi stepped back from investment in diabetes products in 2019 after seeing an erosion of its market share in the US.

Pfizer Inc has concluded its widely reported merger talks with Seagen Inc with a cash offer to acquire the company for $229 per share representing an enterprise value of about $43 billion. Located in Bothell, Washington, US, Seagen (formerly Seattle Genetics), is one of the first developers of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) which are monoclonal antibodies chemically linked to a drug and directed against cancer. The antibody binds to specific proteins on cancer cells and the linker enables the toxic drug payload to enter the cells and kill them.

A 2020 spin-out company from Aarhus University in Denmark has raised €28 million in Series A financing from a syndicate of venture capitalists. Teitur Trophics ApS is building a pipeline of drugs directed against neurodegenerative diseases. Its first product, TT-P34, has reportedly shown brain-specific effects in animal models for Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and frontotemporal dementia.

US-based Silicon Valley Bank, which supplied capital to some of the county’s most ambitious entrepreneurs, collapsed on 10 March after a run on deposits triggered intervention by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is an independent agency created by the US Congress to insure bank deposits and maintain public confidence in the nation’s financial institutions. To protect insured depositors, the FDIC closed the bank and created a new entity that will continue to service these customers.

Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc has initiated a merger with a US cell therapy company in order to expand its pipeline and develop therapies for solid tumours. The UK-founded company, which has offices in Oxford and Philadelphia, US, is to combine with TCR2 Therapeutics Inc in an all-share transaction valued at about $103 million. The combined company will be 75% controlled by Adaptimmune shareholders, and 25% by those from TCR2. The company will list on the Nasdaq market under Adaptimmune’s stock symbol and be led by Adrian Rawcliffe, the current Adaptimmune CEO.

Pfizer Inc is reportedly holding talks to acquire Seagen Inc, the developer of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on 26 February. This comes several months after Seagen was courted by Merck & Co Inc, but these negotiations failed to conclude. The discussions with Merck reportedly centered on a deal worth $40 billion or more. Seagen currently has a market value of about $30 billion and would be expected to seek a premium over that price, the newspaper said.

The UK medical research charity, LifeArc, is one of three donors of a £1 million award to researchers at University College London, UK, who are pioneering new therapies for motor neuron disease. This is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord resulting in a person’s loss of voluntary movement. The two other donors are the Motor Neuron Disease Association and the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation.

Rewind Therapeutics SA of Belgium has recruited a new investor to support its programme for treating neurological diseases by restoring the remyelination function of the central nervous system. Sunstone Life Science Ventures A/S, an independent European investment firm, has joined the syndicate supporting Rewind which includes Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, M Ventures and others.