The ReNeuron Group Plc has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with a subsidiary of the Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co Ltd of China for the development, manufacture and commercialisation of its two allogeneic cell lines which underpin the UK company’s candidate cell therapies for neurological disorders and diseases of the retina.
Germany’s Medigene AG has secured a licensing and collaboration deal with a new Asian biotech which will develop and commercialise its prospective T cell immunotherapies in China, South Korea and Japan. The new company, Cytovant Sciences, has been launched by Roivant Sciences Ltd of Switzerland and Sinovant Sciences in China.
The Dutch biotech, Synaffix BV has secured a deal in China that expands the use of its conjugation technology for antibody-drug conjugates (ADC), while generating income of up to $125 million. Announced on 10 April, the agreement will give Shanghai Miracogen Inc non-exclusive rights to two of Synaffix’s proprietary technologies. One is a conjugation technology that exploits the native glycan for the attachment of a toxic payload to an antibody; the other uses polar spacer technology to link the antibody to a cargo.
With public health authorities increasingly vigilant about another influenza pandemic, the European Commission and 15 EU member states have signed contracts with Seqirus UK Ltd for the supply of influenza vaccines that might be used in an emergency. Announcing the deal on 8 April, the company said the pandemic contracts are the first to be executed under a new EU joint procurement framework. Financial terms were not disclosed.
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.