Finance, Grants, Deals

GlaxoSmithKline Plc has entered a five-year collaboration with Lyell Immunopharma, a San Francisco biotechnology company, to develop new technologies to improve cell therapies for cancer patients. To date, two cell therapies have been approved for blood-borne cancers, but engineered T cells have not yet delivered strong clinical activity in solid tumours. Improving the fitness of T cells and delaying the onset of T cell exhaustion could help engineered T cell therapies become more effective, GSK said.

MiroBio Ltd, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, has raised £27 million in Series A funding from a syndicate of international specialist life science investors to develop antibody modulators of immune cell receptors for auto-immune disease. It is one of the largest A rounds for a European company this year.

Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB is to acquire the US specialty pharmaceutical company Dova Pharmaceuticals Inc in a bid to broaden its haematology and immunology portfolios. The transaction is valued at up to $915 million and consists of a cash offer plus a contingency payment for shareholders if Dova’s lead product is approved for a new indication by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Microsoft Corp has made another foray into the biological sciences under a new collaboration with Novartis which will see both companies use artificial intelligence (AI) to energise drug discovery. The partnership, announced on 1 October, will involve joint research on new therapies for macular degeneration and support the development of cell and gene therapies. It will also use AI to explore new designs for future drugs.

STipe Therapeutics ApS, a 2018 spinout of Aarhus University in Denmark, has raised €20 million in Series A financing to advance a technology for targeting solid tumours by modulating the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway. This pathway is a major driver of innate immunity.

Switzerland-based ADC Therapeutics SA has launched an initial public offering of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange which is expected to raise approximately $200 million. This comes ahead of an expected regulatory filing for its lead cancer therapy ADCT-402 in the second half of 2020.

BioNTech SE has formalised plans to raise approximately $250 million by way of an initial public share offering on the US Nasdaq market to support its portfolio of personalised medicines for cancer and infectious diseases. The company plans to offer 13.2 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) to the public while underwriters will have a 30-day option to buy up to an additional 1.98 million ADSs.

JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and SVB Leerink are acting as lead joint book running managers.

A new US company, Trucode Gene Repair Inc, has been launched with $34 million in financing from Kleiner Perkins and GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet Inc. The company is advancing an in vivo gene editing technology designed to correct mutations that cause genetic disorders such as sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis.

Evotec SE is to conduct small molecule drug development across multiple therapeutic areas for Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd under a new multi-year collaboration designed to deliver clinical drug candidates. The upfront fee hasn’t been disclosed, but preclinical, clinical and commercial milestones could amount to more than $170 million per programme. The agreement covers at least five drug discovery programmes.

The French cell therapy start-up, TreeFrog Therapeutics SAS, has raised a further €3 million in funding for its stem cell production technology, only months after a €7.1 million Series A financing round. Based in Bordeaux, TreeFrog has a platform for mass producing stem cells, reportedly at a significantly lower cost than existing methods.

The platform uses a three-dimensional cell culture system to produce stem cells in bioreactors with short lead times. The new funding includes €450,000 from the French government and €2.4 million from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.