Finance, Grants, Deals

The Italian gene therapy company Genenta Science SRL has raised €13.2 million in a new financing round to progress novel treatments for multiple myeloma and glioblastoma that deliver immunomodulatory molecules into the tumour environment. The company has received regulatory approval to start Phase 1/2 clinical trials in both cancer indications.

The new financing brings total capital raised by the company up to €30.2 million since its founding in 2014 as a spin-out from the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan.

The Dutch vaccine developer DCprime BV has entered a research collaboration with the University Medical Center of Groningen to design a therapeutic vaccine for ovarian cancer using an approach that targets residual disease after a standard-of-care treatment.

The goal of the partnership is to design a novel relapse vaccine for ovarian cancer and to prepare for a clinical trial in ovarian cancer patients. DCprime will work with the university’s department of obstetrics and gynecology which is led by Hans Nijman.

UK based Theragnostics Ltd has obtained rights to an inhibitor of the poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) enzyme in order to develop a new diagnostic for cancer. The licensing agreement is with AstraZeneca Plc and also includes an option to develop a radionuclide-labelled PARP inhibitor. AstraZeneca markets the PARP inhibitor Lynparza.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The gene therapy company uniQure NV has set the price of an underwritten public offering of 4.9 million shares on Nasdaq at $46 per share giving gross proceeds of $225 million. Goldman Sachs & Co LLC and SVB Leerink are joint book-runners for the offering, which attracted more than the targeted amount of $200 million.

Switzerland-based ADC Therapeutics SA has made a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch an initial public offering of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. This comes ahead of an expected regulatory filing for its lead cancer therapy ADCT-402 in the second half of 2020.

The size of the offering and price range of the shares have not yet been determined, the company said on 6 September. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Cowen will act as joint book-runners for the offering.

Semma Therapeutics Inc, a company co-founded by stem cell scientist Douglas Melton, is being sold to Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc to advance a potentially curative treatment for Type 1 diabetes. Vertex will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Semma for $950 million in cash.

Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc has entered into a collaboration with the Japanese company Noile-Immune Biotech Inc to develop new T cell therapies for cancer. The partnership will involve co-developing Adaptimmune’s T cell products with technology originated by Noile-Immune enabling the T cells to secrete interleukin 7 and the protein CCL19. This is expected to improve the proliferation and trafficking of T cells to solid tumours. Adaptimmune will make an upfront cash payment and milestone payments to Noile-Immune of up to $312 million across all programmes.

Glasgow, UK-based MGB Biopharma Ltd has completed a new funding round, enabling it to advance an ongoing Phase 2a trial of its candidate antibiotic MGB-BP-3 and prepare for the next stage of development. The candidate drug is being developed to treat Clostridium difficile-associated disease.

Celgene Corp, which is in the process of being acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, has reached an option agreement with privately-owned Immatics Biotehnologies GmbH of Germany that would give it access to prospective cell therapies for cancer. Celgene already owns clinical-stage T cell therapies for cancer arising from its 2018 acquisition of Juno Therapeutics Inc.

Amgen Inc has reached an agreement with Celgene Corp to buy its psoriasis asset Otezla (apremilast) for $13.4 billion in cash, thus enabling Celgene to proceed with its previously announced merger with Bristol-Myers Squib Company. The merger, announced in early January, will combine the oncology and inflammation franchises of BMS and Celgene. But US regulators had raised questions about the two companies’ potential dominance in the area of psoriasis. The asset disposal is expected to satisfy these concerns.