Finance, Grants, Deals

Verona Pharma Plc has agreed to grant exclusive rights to Nuance Pharma Ltd of Shanghai, China for its respiratory treatment ensifentrine in exchange for an upfront payment of $25 million in cash and other considerations. The rights relate to the development and commercialisation of ensifentrine in mainland China and adjacent territories. Ensifentrine is an investigational therapy, currently in a global Phase 3 programme for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Late-stage clinical trials are currently underway at sites in the US, Europe and South Korea.

A new application for therapeutic RNA is being explored by the UK start-up company Transine Therapeutics Ltd. On 2 June, Transine announced receipt of an extended £9.1 million in seed financing. The funding round was co-led by Takeda Ventures Inc and the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), a specialist venture capital fund supported by private industry, charities, and the UK government.

The developer of a new antifungal agent designed as an inhaled therapy for invasive pulmonary aspergillosis, has received $92 million in new capital. UK-based Pulmocide Ltd will use the Series C financing to carry out a Phase 3 registration trial for the drug PC945, which is a triazole antifungal agent.

Innovative Molecules GmbH of Germany has raised €20 million from a Series A financing round to progress a treatment for herpes simplex virus, a microbe that jumped from chimpanzees to humans more than 1.6 million years ago and now infects around two-thirds of the global population. There are two forms of the virus, type 1 and type 2, which can present either as cold sores on the mouth or blisters on the genitals. Once infected, an individual has the virus for life, though in many people it remains latent.

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.