Finance, Grants, Deals

The UK gene therapy company Autolus Therapeutics Plc has raised $100.8 million in a US public share offering to support its portfolio of programmed T cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. This follows the issue of 4.2 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) representing 4.2 million ordinary shares which were priced at $24 per ADS. In addition, Autolus has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 630,000 ADSs at the public offering price.

AveXis, a gene therapy company acquired by Novartis in 2018, is to expand its manufacturing capacity with the purchase of an advanced biologics facility in Colorado, US. This coincides with the US regulatory review of the company’s gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a neuromuscular disease.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to deliver a decision on marketing authorisation in May. AveXis will also seek regulatory approvals for the therapy in the EU and Japan.

Cambridge Innovation Capital Plc, a venture capital company supporting businesses in and around Cambridge, UK has raised £150 million in new capital to support its portfolio of healthcare and technology companies. The financing is one of the largest private rounds in Europe this year and more than doubles to £275 million the resources available to the company.

Novartis is to spend $310 million upfront to acquire a portfolio of candidate small molecule drugs targeting a pathway in the innate immune system that could potentially treat chronic inflammatory disorders as well as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a condition in which fat builds up in the liver.

Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have assumed new prominence as cancer treatments in the wake of a deal between AstraZeneca Plc and Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd of Japan to co-develop trastuzumab deruxtecan, an ADC for a group of HER2-mutated cancers.

AstraZeneca is to pay the Japanese company $1.35 billion initially for rights to the late-stage ADC candidate which received a ‘breakthrough therapy’ designation from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017. The two companies expect to make a regulatory submission in the second half of this year.

France-based Genfit SA has raised $135 million in a global share offering that includes a listing on the Nasdaq over-the-counter market in the US. The company’s US listing is in the form of American Depositary Shares (ADSs). The company has been trading on the Euronext exchange in Paris since 2006.

The global offering, which was priced on 27 March, consists of 6,650,000 new ordinary shares, of which 6,150,000 are in the form of Nasdaq-listed ADS at a price of $20.32 per ADS. The remaining 500,000 shares were placed in Europe and elsewhere at a price of €18 per share.

Celgene Corp has contracted the UK artificial intelligence company Exscientia Ltd to supply drug discovery services over a period of three years in order to identify new candidate molecules for three programmes in the areas of oncology and autoimmunity.

The alliance is one of several for Exscientia which has also secured collaborations with Roche, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Sanofi SA and Evotec AG. Celgene, which is soon to be taken over by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, is also an investor in Exscientia.

Pfizer Inc has entered into an option agreement to acquire Vivet Therapeutics SAS, a privately-held French company with a gene therapy for Wilson disease, a rare genetic disorder that prevents the body from regulating copper. The disease can lead to liver and brain damage.

Pfizer will initially take a 15% equity interest in Vivet with an exclusive option to acquire the remaining shares in the future. The exercise of the option is linked to the performance of the therapy in a Phase 1/2 trial.

A new research collaboration which will study the human microbiome as a source for potential cancer therapies is being undertaken by Enterome SA of France and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, US. The partners will explore whether bacteria in the human microbiome generate antigens which are similar to those found on certain tumours. To the extent that there is a molecular similarity, these bacterial antigens could be used for immunotherapies.

The German biotech Probiodrug AG and a US-based cooperative have received a $15 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test Probiodrug’s small molecule drug in patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease.

The grant will help finance a Phase 2b study of the drug PQ912 which inhibits glutaminyl cyclase, an enzyme that triggers the production of a peptide which is a constituent of Alzheimer’s disease plaques. The grant is expected to be dispersed over four years.