The UK government plans to invest £150 million in a small number of specialist technology funds, including those in the life sciences, in order to stimulate private venture capital funding of small businesses with a high-growth potential.
The Wellcome Trust has awarded £4.3 million to researchers at St George’s, University of London to investigate a new class of drugs for asthma and allergies.
Clavis Pharma ASA, a Norwegian company that specialises in lipid-based delivery of pharmaceutical agents, achieved an endorsement of its technology with a placement of new shares worth NOK 129 million (€14.3 million).
The Swiss specialty biopharmaceutical company, Lumavita AG, has topped up a recent Series A funding round with CHF 6 million, bringing the total amount raised for commercialising its lead antibiotic product to CHF 24 million.
Pharming Group NV has expanded its equity by negotiating the conversion of some of its convertible debt into shares and by issuing about one million new shares from a stand-by equity facility.
Allergy Therapeutics Plc is proposing to raise up to £22.4 million in a private share placement which would give a group of South American investors up to 49.65% of the group’s enlarged share capital.
A British medical discovery company with 25 employees, a history of losses and no products under clinical development is about to raise £50 million through a share sale on Britain’s junior stock market
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.