A consortium led by Exiqon A/S of Denmark has been awarded a DKK 24 million ($4.5 million) grant from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation to develop a new diagnostic to detect colon cancer from a blood sample.
Antisoma Plc has roughly doubled the cash available for developing its advanced products as the result of the sale of US rights to oral fludarabine, a cancer drug it acquired as part of an earlier takeover. The rights were sold to sanofi-aventis for $65 million.
Opsona Therapeutics, a 2004 spinout from Trinity College Dublin with expertise in toll-like receptors, has closed its Series B financing with the addition of the Roche Venture Fund and Enterprise Ireland to the syndicate.
Europe’s biggest public-private partnership in the life sciences, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), is awarding the equivalent of €246 million to 15 research projects.
Three European venture investors have topped up a Series A financing for the privately-held US company, Anaphore Inc, which is developing a new generation of protein therapeutics.
Max Planck Innovation GmbH, the technology transfer arm of the Max Planck Society, has announced the launch of a new €100 million fund to invest in pharmaceutical projects originating from the society’s research organisations.
In a bid to attract more US investors, Intercell AG has launched an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) facility with the Bank of New York Mellon acting as the depository. Each dollar denominated ADR represents one Intercell ordinary share.
Vernalis Plc of the UK announced plans to raise £22.1 million in a fully underwritten share issue and separate plans for a 20-1 reverse split of its outstanding shares.
The French state agency, Oseo Innovation, has awarded €1.8 million to a privately-held molecular diagnostics company in Nantes to support a biomarker project aimed at predicting rejections of kidney transplants.
ProtAffin AG of Austria has raised €14.1 million in a Series B round which will be used to complete pre-clinical development and Phase 1 testing of a new anti-inflammatory compound. The round was co-led by Atlas Venture and SR One Ltd.