Sanofi SA is to further extend its investment in messenger RNA (mRNA) technology with a bid to acquire Translate Bio Inc, a company with which it has had an mRNA vaccine collaboration since June 2018. The French company is offering $38 per share in cash for Translate Bio, giving a transaction value of $3.2 billion. Sanofi will finance the deal internally.
T-knife Therapeutics Inc has raised $110 million in a Series B financing round to advance its preclinical portfolio of T cell receptor (TCR) therapies for cancer. The technology originated in Germany and will be developed and commercialised by teams based in Berlin and San Francisco, US.
The Italian healthcare group, Angelini Pharma, has become the sole institutional investor in a new venture fund that will provide capital to promising neuroscience companies in North America. The fund will be managed by Lumira Ventures of Canada and is called Angelini Lumira Biosciences Fund (ALBF). Angelini will commit $35 million to the fund in addition to investing $5 million in Lumira Ventures IV, a separate fund.
AC Immune SA is to acquire a candidate vaccine and other assets to treat Parkinson’s disease in a strategic move to broaden its portfolio of drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The Switzerland-based company already has a portfolio of candidate drugs for Alzheimer’s disease. The acquisition – from Affiris AG of Austria – will give it a vaccine for Parkinson’s disease which has been validated in a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Artios Pharma Ltd, which is building a portfolio of small molecule drugs designed to kill cancer cells by blocking their ability to repair damaged DNA, has raised $153 million in a Series C financing round. The company is preparing to take a compound targeting DNA polymerase theta (Pol theta) into clinical development before the end of the year. Pol theta is an enzyme that plays a role in the proliferation of certain cancer cells but which is not necessary for normal cell growth.
GHO Capital Partners LLP, a specialist healthcare investor located in London, UK, has closed its third fund, raising more than €2 billion in capital for investment. The company invests broadly, providing money to enterprises in the medical device and technology sectors, biopharmaceutical enterprises, and companies delivering services to patients.
A UK company with technology for delivering peptides to the cytosol of cells, has raised £6.2 million in seed financing to investigate the application of its technology across a range of therapies. The financing was co-led by incoming investor Octopus Ventures and existing investor M Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA. NanoSyrinx was founded in 2020 by Joseph Healey, Nicholas Waterfield and Alexia Hapeshi to commercialise research conducted at the University of Warwick’s Medical School.
MorphoSys AG has increased its share capital with the issue of 1,337,552 new ordinary shares to a subsidiary of Royalty Pharma Plc as part of a long-term financial partnership that is enabling the German company to acquire Constellation Pharmaceuticals Inc of the US. The share deal will generate $100 million for MorphoSys and give Royalty Pharma Investments 3.9% of the German company’s registered share capital. MorphoSys completed the acquisition of Constellation on 15 July, giving it one of the first US companies to develop drugs in the field of epigenetics.
A new biotech company co-located in Denmark and Belgium, has been launched with €60 million in Series A funding to investigate potential small molecule therapies for neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. Muna Therapeutics draws on the expertise of scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark and KU Leuven in Belgium. Early entrepreneurial support was provided by Novo Seeds, a unit of the Novo Holdings A/S investment group.
A US company developing models of cancer tumours derived from the tissues of actual patients has received $70 million in Series A financing in order to advance its diagnostic technology. Xilis Inc of Durham, North Carolina has taken the concept of the organoid, a miniaturised organ, and adapted it to oncology. The financing was led by Mubadala Capital with participation by the new investors GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Life Sciences Partners (LSP) as well as existing investors.