Finance, Grants, Deals

The private equity group, EQT Life Sciences, is lead investor in a €6.5 million Series A financing round for an Irish medical device company that is seeking regulatory approval to market a new product for use in Caesarean-section (C-section) surgery. The company, Nua Surgical Ltd, has developed a self-retaining retractor for the delivery of a baby when a vaginal delivery can’t be done safely. According to EQT, the device enables clinicians to deliver the baby, repair tissue, and identify bleeds with a single-use sterile tool.

GSK Plc is to acquire a candidate immunotherapy from Chimagen Biosciences Ltd of Shanghai, China in order to strengthen its portfolio of candidate products for autoimmune diseases. Announced on 29 October, the agreement involves an upfront payment of $300 million by GSK for full global rights to the asset, CMG1A46, which is a clinical-stage dual CD19 and CD20-targeted T cell engager. In addition, Chimagen will be eligible for development and commercial milestone payments totalling $550 million.

Agomab Therapeutics NV of Belgium has raised $89 million in new capital to advance a pipeline of candidate products for fibrotic disorders. Announced on 25 October, the Series D round brings total funds raised from investors to more than $320 million since the company’s launch in 2017. Agomab’s newest investors are Sanofi SA and Invus, a US private equity company. Existing investors include Fidelity Management & Research Co and EQT Life Sciences.

Biopharma executives in Europe and Asia, together with their financial supporters, have launched a new company to develop therapies that will both activate and inhibit the function of regulatory T cells (Tregs). Tregs are white blood cells that play a key role in regulating the immune system to ensure that the body responds appropriately to foreign antigens and neoantigens. Announced on 18 October, Regimmune/Kiji TX is the result of a merger between Kiji Therapeutics of France and Regimmune Ltd of Taiwan. The Japan based venture capital group DCI Partner Co Ltd helped execute the merger.

H. Lundbeck A/S is to acquire Longboard Pharmaceuticals Inc of the US for $2.6 billion in a transaction that will significantly expand the Danish company’s neurology pipeline. Longboard has a small molecule asset in Phase 3 that is being developed for the treatment of seizures associated with a group of rare epilepsies – a market segment not currently covered by the Danish company. The drug, bexicaserin, is currently in a study for Dravet syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy that begins in infancy.

Immatics NV, a clinical stage biotech company, has announced the pricing of a new share offering in the US which is expected to raise $150 million for the development of T cell receptor (TCR) therapies for cancer. The underwritten public offering of 16,250,000 ordinary shares was priced at $9.25 per share. The offering is expected to close on 15 October.

Purespring Therapeutics Ltd, a gene therapy company developing treatments for kidney diseases, has raised £80 million from private investors to bring its lead product into clinical development. This is the latest in a series of transactions among biotech companies in the kidney disease sector but the first for a preclinical gene therapy. Purespring’s product candidate, PS-002, is an adeno-associated viral vector with a gene payload for the treatment of IgA nephropathy (IgAN), a chronic kidney disease primarily affecting young adults. 

A consortium of universities and hospitals, with financial support from the UK government and industry, is to undertake a four-year project to collect data on patients who have received immunotherapy for cancer to establish the benefits and risks of these treatments. The treatments, which include checkpoint inhibitors, have extended the lives of many patients by enabling the body’s immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells.

AstraZeneca Plc is to pay $100 million upfront and up to $1.92 billion in milestone payments for rights to a pre-clinical lipid-lowering therapy from China. The developer, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd, is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and has R&D facilities in both China and the US. The asset being acquired is a small molecule lipoprotein inhibitor which is in pre-clinical development for patients suffering from dyslipidaemia, a disorder involving abnormal levels of lipids in the bloodstream. Dyslipidaemia is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.

An Italian biotech company, Aptadir Therapeutic Srl, which is developing a new class of RNA therapies, launched on 24 September with pre-seed funding of $1.6 million and plans to tackle cancer by blocking aberrant DNA methylation. DNA methylation is an essential biological process that enables the expression of genes in humans. But this process can be thrown off balance by external factors such as age or diets, leading to cancer and genetic disorders.