Finance, Grants, Deals

In just 12 years – the time it takes to develop a new chemical entity – argenx NV has grown from Dutch start-up into an internationally recognised biopharma enterprise. The company has a portfolio of wholly-owned and partnered antibody therapeutics, the first of which has been submitted for review to the US Food and Drug Administration. On 5 February, it announced gross proceeds of $1.15 billion from a global share offering, managed by J.P. Morgan and three other leading US financial institutions.

Less than a year after signing a lucrative licensing deal with Eli Lilly and Co, UK-based Evox Therapeutics Ltd has completed a Series C financing round to advance therapeutics based on exosomes into the clinic. The £69.2 million financing was led by Redmile Group, a US hedge fund, which was joined by the new investors OrbiMed Healthcare Fund Management and the Invus Group LLC.

Proceeds of the financing will enable several compounds directed at rare disease to progress towards clinical development

The Medicxi investment group has launched Centessa Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a new pharmaceutical company that brings together a group of diverse assets in order to develop them at scale with oversight from experts in the field. The launch marks a new stage in the Medicxi investment model that focuses on developing new drugs from single assets with a minimum of infrastructure in order to increase productivity and improve the return on investment.

Imcyse SA has raised an additional €21.3 million in Series B financing in order to advance its pipeline of immunotherapy compounds and simultaneously brought Pfizer Inc on board as a shareholder. Earlier, Imcyse announced a licensing deal with Pfizer to develop a preclinical asset for rheumatoid arthritis.

Novartis and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have announced plans to work together to develop an in vivo gene therapy for sickle cell disease, one of the oldest known and most common genetic disorders. The project will pool the Swiss company’s drug discovery expertise with the Gates Foundation’s charitable healthcare mission. A therapy developed by the collaboration would be distributed to low and middle-income countries.

A spin-out from the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands has raised seed funding to discover and develop new T cell therapies for solid tumours including triple negative breast cancer. The company, Pan Cancer T BV, will be investigating T cell therapies which have been equipped with new receptors enabling them to target specific cancer antigens. The group of therapies is known as T cell receptor (TCR) T cells.

A company with technology for microRNA compounds has raised €18.5 million in a Series B financing round to advance a product for patients with advanced solid tumours. The company, InteRNA Technologies, is based in the Netherlands. Leading the funding round was AurorA Science, a biotech investment group based in Milan, Italy. As part of the funding, Gabriele Campi of AurorA will join the Dutch company’s board of directors.

London-based Abingworth LLP has raised $465 million from its limited partners for a new life sciences fund which will target companies with innovative therapies in the UK, Europe, and across the Atlantic in the US. The fund, ABV 8, exceeded its target size of $375 million and attracted several new investors including, British Patient Capital, a commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank Plc.

The German vaccine producer CureVac NV has completed a follow-on share issue on Nasdaq giving total gross proceeds of $517.5 million, including the exercise of the underwriters’ option. This comes five months after the company, which is developing a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine for Covid-19, raised $245.3 million in an initial public offering. In the latest financing, CureVac issued 5.75 million shares at a price of $90 per share.

Ireland-based Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc is to expand its presence in neuroscience with the acquisition of GW Pharmaceuticals Inc which has pioneered the development and commercialisation of medicines derived from cannabinoids. The transaction is valued at $7.2 billion, or $6.7 billion net of GW Pharma’s cash.