Finance, Grants, Deals

An international investment group led by Life Sciences Partners (LSP) of the Netherlands has provided $45 million in Series D financing to the digital health company Endotronix Inc to commercialise its system for helping physicians treat patients with heart failure from home.

The product platform consists of a remote monitoring system coupled with an implantable pulmonary artery sensor that enables physicians to monitor their patients and detect any worsening of a heart failure.

The Swiss medical device company Luciole Medical AG has raised CHF 5.3 million (€4.7 million) in a Series A financing round to commercialise a minimally-invasive monitoring probe designed to measure blood oxygen levels in the brain, specifically for patients in intensive care.

Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has exercised an option to acquire Austria-based ViraTherapeutics GmbH which is developing oncolytic virus vaccines to treat cancer. The transaction has been valued at €210 million.

Galapagos NV has raised $300 million in a secondary offering on Nasdaq two days after the Belgian company and its partner Gilead Sciences Inc announced positive Phase 3 results for a new JAK1 inhibitor to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

As part of an ongoing out-licensing policy, AstraZeneca Plc has reached an agreement to transfer a candidate product for multiple system atrophy to Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd of the US for further clinical development and commercialisation. The product, AZD3241, has completed a Phase 2a clinical study.

Roche’s Genentech has committed funding of $96 million to Affimed NV for rights to the German company’s biologics platform for the production of cancer therapies targeting natural killer (NK) cells in the innate immune system. The platform can generate antibodies directed against NK cells as well as against T cells of the adaptive immune system.

Novo Nordisk A/S has entered a research alliance with Evotec AG to discover and develop new small molecule therapies for diabetes and obesity, diseases that affect an estimated one billion people worldwide. Financial terms of the agreement weren’t disclosed.

Novo Nordisk A/S has acquired a UK university spin-out with technology for a new generation of insulins that would be released automatically into the bloodstream in response to a rise in blood glucose levels. In principle this would make it easier for people with diabetes to manage their disease and achieve tight control over blood glucose levels.

The private equity group Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS) is to acquire Abzena Plc, a service company based in Cambridge UK, that has built up an international business in antibody discovery and chemistry services with subsidiaries in two locations in the US.

The acquisition values Abzena at 16 pence per share or approximately £34.4 million, which is more than double the closing price of the company’s shares on the AIM market in London on 15 August. The price is about 1.5 times the company’s revenue of £22 million in the fiscal year ended 31 March 2018.

Germany-based BioNTech AG is to expand its portfolio of individualised therapies beyond cancer to include infectious disease. Under a new collaboration with Pfizer Inc, the two companies will develop messenger RNA-based vaccines for the prevention of influenza.

The agreement involves an initial payment of $120 million to BioNTech plus potential development, regulatory and commercial milestones of up to up to $305 million.