Depixus SAS has raised €30.6 million in Series A financing to support development of technology that can extract information from DNA, RNA and proteins, thereby generating new insights into the function of the human genome. The round was co-led by Lansdowne Partners and the PSIM Fund which is operated by Bpifrance on behalf of the French state. The new financing brings the company’s total equity and grant funding to more than €41 million.
Switzerland-based Vifor Pharma Group is to be acquired by CSL Ltd of Australia for CHF 10.9 billion ($11.7 billion) creating one of the largest companies in nephrology and cardio-renal therapies. The merger comes less than a month after Vifor itself purchased two smaller companies.
Sanofi SA is to expand its vaccine capacity with the acquisition of a privately-owned Austrian company, Origimm Biotechnology GmbH, that has a candidate product for acne vulgaris, a common, chronic skin disease. Acne vulgaris is linked to the bacterium Cutibacterium acnes, a complex Gram positive bacteria. The therapeutic vaccine, which is based on recombinant proteins, entered clinical studies in the third quarter.
A French start-up company with assets in-licensed from Sanofi SA has raised €12 million in seed financing to discover potential drugs for heart failure. Corteria Pharmaceuticals SAS will use data from subpopulations of patients with cardiovascular disease to identify targets for new therapies.
A venture capital company backed by Swedish and Danish institutions has closed its first fund at €122.3 million. Designed to support promising life science companies in the Nordic region, Eir Ventures I AB has already invested in nine companies, two of which have completed initial public offerings (IPOs) on the US Nasdaq market.
The Roche Group has established a partnership with a drug discovery company in Salt Lake City, US to identify novel targets for new neurology drugs and for one indication in oncology. The partner, Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc, has technology for searching large biological and chemical datasets for information on biological relationships, particularly in neuroscience.
A new immunotherapy company has been launched in the UK, based on science conducted by Caetano Reis e Sousa and colleagues at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Adendra Therapeutics Ltd will research candidate drugs for the treatment of solid cancers and T cell-based autoimmune disorders by exploiting dendritic cell biology.
Celyad Oncology SA, a Belgian cell therapy developer, has made a private share placement with an affiliate of the Fortress Investment Group, raising $32.5 million to help support its operations into the first half of 2023. The placement involved 6.5 million ordinary shares and was arranged by SVB Leerink.
The board of Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB (Sobi) has said the withdrawal of a takeover bid by a private equity consortium won’t change the company’s strategic objective of becoming a global leader in rare diseases. The statement, issued on 3 December, follows an announcement by the consortium that it was cancelling its $8.1 billion tender offer for the Swedish company after only 87.3% of shareholders accepted it. The consortium was looking to buy more than 90% of Sobi’s outstanding shares.
Belgium-based UCB SA has negotiated a partnership with Novartis to co-develop a small molecule treatment for Parkinson’s disease which it in-licenced in 2014 from Neuropore Therapeutics Inc. The candidate treatment, UCB0599, targets alpha-synuclein, a key protein involved in the disease’s pathology. The compound is currently in a Phase 2 study in patients with early-stage disease.