Finance, Grants, Deals

Immunic Inc, which is co-located in the US and Germany, has raised gross proceeds of $103.5 million to support development of its pipeline of small molecule immunology drugs, the most advanced of which is being investigated for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. The underwritten public offering of 5.75 million shares was priced at $18 per share, a discount from its closing price on Nasdaq on 4 August of $19.43.

SVB Leerink was the bookrunning manager for the offering. Wedbush PacGrow and Ladenburg Thalmann acted as co-managers.

Freeline Therapeutics became a public company on 7 August with the issue of 8.8 million American Depositary Shares on the US Nasdaq market raising gross proceeds of $158.8 million for the development of its portfolio of gene therapy products. The lead product, FLT180a, is in a Phase 1/2 study for patients with haemophilia B, a blood clotting disorder caused by a missing or defective Factor IX clotting protein.

The ADSs, which represent 8.8 million ordinary shares, were priced at $18 per ADS. They will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FRLN.

T-knife GmbH, a new company with technology for humanising T cell receptors derived from transgenic mice, has raised €66 million in a Series A financing round in order to develop therapies to treat solid tumours. Current gene based cell therapies for cancer have been highly successful in treating haematological malignancies. However thus far they have been unable to overcome multiple barriers for the treatment of solid tumours.

Evotec SE is to develop antisense oligonucleotide drugs for a number of indications under a new drug discovery collaboration with Secarna Pharmaceuticals GmbH of Munich, Germany. Secarna was founded in 2015 and has more than 15 programmes in development focusing on oncology, immunology, ophthalmology as well as cardiometabolic diseases.

The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The agreement was announced on 5 August, only a week after Vico Therapeutics BV of the Netherlands raised $31 million for its preclinical antisense oligonucleotide platform.

A group of international investors led by Life Sciences Partners has raised $31 million for Vico Therapeutics BV, a young Dutch company with a preclinical antisense oligonucleotide asset which is being developed for rare central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The Series A financing was co-led by Kurma Partners with participation by Polaris Partners and others.

Sangamo Therapeutics Inc is to help develop genomic medicines for neurodevelopmental disorders under a new agreement with Novartis valued at up to $795 million. The two companies will use Sangamo’s zinc finger protein transcription factor technology to upregulate the expression of three undisclosed genes involved in diseases which include autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability.

F-star Therapeutics Ltd is set to gain a listing on Nasdaq through a merger with Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals Inc of the US giving it a fresh source of capital to advance its pipeline of bispecific antibodies. The transaction is expected to complete in late 2020 and give F-star’s shareholders 61.2% of the new group to be called F-star Therapeutics Inc.

Eliot Forster, the current chief executive of F-star, will become president and chief executive of the combined group which will be co-located in Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

The US government is to provide up to $2.1 billion to Sanofi SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to help them develop and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine. The two European companies are among eight others selected for support under the government’s Operation Warp Speed programme. The goal is to secure supplies of a variety of vaccines for the US population.

Sanofi and GSK are working on a candidate vaccine that combines the French company’s recombinant protein-based technology with adjuvant from GSK. Sanofi has used the same technology for an influenza vaccine.

Belgium-based UCB SA is to out-license an experimental anti-tau antibody to the Roche group for development as a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. The antibody, UCB0107, targets a central tau epitope which is being developed to block or reduce the spread of tau pathology.

Germany-based BioNTech SE has raised $512 million in a secondary offering on Nasdaq to support its ongoing therapies for cancer and infectious diseases which include a candidate vaccine for Covid-19. The results of the financing were announced on 27 July, the same day that BioNTech and its partner, Pfizer Inc, launched a Phase 2/3 trial of their messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine candidate for Covid-19.