Finance, Grants, Deals

Bristol Myers Squibb Co is to acquire Turning Point Therapeutics Inc, a US oncology drug developer, in a bid to move ahead of its competitors in the field of treatments for non-small cell lung cancer. It is offering $76 per share of Turning Point’s stock in an all cash transaction valued at $4.1 billion. Turning Point’s lead asset, repotrectinib, is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting the ROS1 gene in lung cancer. It is currently in a late stage clinical development.

Minoryx Therapeutics SL of Spain has raised €51 million in order to prepare for the regulatory review and possible market launch of its drug leriglitazone for the rare orphan disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD). The company is preparing a marketing authorisation application for the European Medicines Agency and holding pre-registration talks with the US Food and Drug Administration. The EU filing would be directed at treating adult male patients with the X-ALD phenotype adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN).

Germany-based Immatics NV is to make its cell therapy platform available to Bristol Myers Squibb Co in order to develop a further cohort of immunotherapies for cancer. The collaboration, announced on 2 June, is an expansion of an existing partnership aimed at developing off-the-shelf cell therapies for solid tumours.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to pay up to $3.3 billion to acquire Affinivax, Inc of Cambridge, US, which has a portfolio of vaccines to prevent pneumococcal disease and other infections. The deal is one of the company’s largest, and consists of an upfront payment of $2.1 billion plus two milestone payments of $0.6 billion each. The milestone payments will be dispensed upon the completion of certain paediatric clinical studies. Affinivax’s lead product, AFX3772, is in Phase 2 for the prevention of infection from Streptococcus pneumoniae, a gram-positive bacterium.

A Cambridge, UK company investigating the therapeutic potential of antisense long non-coding RNAs has raised an additional £4.6 million in seed financing to accelerate the development of its product portfolio focused on diseases of the central nervous system and ophthalmology indications. Transine Therapeutics Ltd announced the additional funding on 31 May, bringing total proceeds from the seed round up to £13.7 million. The round was led by new investor Epidarex Capital with participation from existing investor the Dementia Discovery Fund.

Evotec SE has expanded its capabilities in the field of cell therapy with the acquisition of the Italian company Rigenerand Srl, a 2009 spin-off of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The acquisition, valued at €23 million, comes within weeks of Evotec’s agreement with Sernova Corp of Canada to develop a beta cell replacement therapy for diabetes. The prospective therapy will use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells produced by Evotec, combined with a pouch developed by Sernova.

Syncona Ltd has increased its holding in SwanBio Therapeutics Inc, a gene therapy company, as part of a $56 million Series B financing to support the company’s lead product for adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), a rare, inherited neurodegenerative disease. Mass General Brigham Ventures of Cambridge, US also invested in the round.

OMass Therapeutics Ltd, a 2016 spin-out from the University of Oxford, has raised $100 million in a Series B financing round to advance its pipeline of drugs for immunology disorders and rare diseases. Proceeds from the financing will advance the company’s small molecule therapeutics towards clinical trials. The pipeline includes drugs targeting solute carriers, a group of membrane transport proteins, and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), a diverse group of cell surface receptors.

Bristol Myers Squibb Co has extended its drug discovery partnership with Evotec SE in protein degradation – less than a year after the two companies decided to work together longer on a separate project in neurodegeneration. The latest agreement, announced on 10 May, will see BMS and Evotec collaborate for an additional eight years to develop a pipeline of molecular glue degraders. These are small, drug-like compounds that can promote the degradation of disease-causing proteins.

MitoRx Therapeutics Ltd, a new UK company focused on degenerative diseases, has completed a seed financing round in order to develop therapeutics that reverse mitochondrial dysfunction. Investors in the new company include the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, Wren Capital, Oxford Technology Management as well as angel investors. The size of the financing was not disclosed.