The UK-based oncology company Iksuda Therapeutics Ltd has completed a $47 million financing round to progress a pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), a drug class that is seeing renewed interest from investors because of advances in conjugation technologies. The financing was co-led by the South Korean entities Mirae Asset Financial Group and Celltrion Inc.
argenx SE is to take back rights to the antibody therapeutic cusatuzumab after its partner Cilag GmbH International, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson Inc, announced plans to quit the three-year-old collaboration. Cusatuzumab is in a Phase 1b study in newly-diagnosed, elderly patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). It is being tested with venetoclax and the chemotherapy azacitidine.
MorphoSys AG has announced plans to acquire Constellation Pharmaceuticals Inc, one of the first US companies to develop drugs in the field of epigenetics. Germany-based MorphoSys will pay $1.7 billion for the company, which has two clinical-stage cancer programmes and several projects in preclinical development.
The Canadian real estate investor Oxford Properties Group has acquired a life science park in Cambridge, UK for £45 million as part of a strategy to service the global life science sector. The park, 310 Cambridge Science Park, is currently let to AstraZeneca Plc until November 2023, after which the company will move to new headquarters in the area.
Pieris Pharmaceuticals Inc has entered into a new collaboration involving its proprietary protein technology in order to develop therapies for respiratory and retinal diseases. The agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, is the company’s fifth partnership since its founding in 2000, and the first in ophthalmology.
Numab Therapeutics AG has raised CHF 100 million ($111.48 million) from a Series C financing round, enabling it to accelerate development of its lead antibody programme for multiple cancer indications. The latest financing was co-led by new investors Novo Holdings and HBM Partners. It comes a little over a year after Numab completed a Series B round for CHF 22 million.
Dyno Therapeutics Inc, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, has raised $100 million in a Series A financing round to expand its technology platform for designing adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for gene therapies. The company is using artificial intelligence to improve the performance of capsids, the cell-targeting protein shells of AAV vectors.
MiNA Therapeutics Ltd has entered into a research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Co to develop candidate drugs using technology for restoring normal cell function by activating gene expression. MiNA’s small activating RNA (saRNA) technology will be used to research up to five drug targets selected by Lilly.
The French vaccine company Valneva SE has raised $107.6 million from an initial public offering of shares on the US Nasdaq market, enabling it to accelerate development of candidate vaccines to prevent Covid-19 as well as Lyme disease. The company also has a prophylactic vaccine in development against the chikungunya virus, which is prevalent in Africa, Asia and India. The company’s American Depositary Shares began trading on Nasdaq on 6 May.
Valneva is also listed on Euronext Paris.
A topical treatment for diabetic macular oedema is poised to enter Phase 3 development following the closing of a $57 million Series C financing round for the developer, Oculis SA of Switzerland. The treatment, OCS-01, is an eye drop formulation of dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, which if approved, would be the first topical treatment for a retinal oedema.