Pfizer Inc is expanding its presence in oncology with the acquisition of Trillium Therapeutics Inc, a Canadian company with a pipeline of early-stage therapies for treating haematological malignancies and solid tumours. The company’s two lead products target CD47, a molecule that tumours use to evade the immune system.
The European Commission has approved funding from the Danish government to Bavarian Nordic A/S to support the company’s development of a vaccine for Covid-19. The funding will take the form of a repayable advance. The candidate vaccine, ABNCoV2, was developed by AdaptVac, a joint venture spun out of the University of Copenhagen, and licensed to Bavarian Nordic in July 2020. It uses AdaptVac’s viral capsid-like virus particle technology.
A bidding contest between Philip Morris and Carlyle, a private equity firm, for ownership of Vectura Group Plc has ended with the cigarette company winning control of the UK pharma group. On 12 August, the Vectura board accepted a final offer from Philip Morris of 165 pence per share to acquire the company, giving a total enterprise value of £1.1 billion.
Mission Therapeutics Ltd has reached an important threshold in a three-year old collaboration with AbbVie Inc aimed at degrading the toxic proteins in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The event was the selection of two enzyme targets for the development of new small molecule drugs for these diseases, which are the most common neurological disorders worldwide. It triggered a $20 million milestone payment to Mission, announced on 9 August.
H. Lundbeck A/S has entered a collaboration with a US start-up company specialising in small molecules that target RNA, as part of a drive to expand its portfolio of medicines for central nervous system disorders. The collaboration is with Rgenta Therapeutics Inc of Cambridge, Mass, US, which has technology for identifying regulatory sites in RNA that are amenable for modulation by small molecules.
A bidding contest between Philip Morris and Carlyle, a private equity firm, for ownership of the UK pharma company Vectura Group Plc has taken an unexpected turn. Vectura’s board of directors has received a higher offer for the company from Carlyle and has announced plans to recommend that shareholders approve it. This comes just a month after the board recommended an offer from Philip Morris International, which in turn had outbid an earlier offer from Carlyle.
Bayer AG has expanded its oncology portfolio with the acquisition of Vividion Therapeutics Inc of the US and its proprietary drug discovery platform. Vividion’s technology involves identifying previously unknown pockets on well-validated protein targets implicated in a wide range of diseases. The company’s lead programmes are small molecule drugs targeting NRF2 mutant cancers as well as NRF2 activators for a number of inflammatory diseases. NRF2 is a protein that helps regulate the work of antioxidant proteins that protect against oxidative damage.
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.