Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd has announced plans to acquire the Belgium-based cell therapy company TiGenix NV for €520 million, a company with which it already has a licensing deal for the company’s lead product.
A new Belgian start-up has been launched with Series A funding of €15.2 million to develop re-myelinating therapies for patients with multiple sclerosis and other myelin-related diseases. Called Rewind Therapeutics SA, the company is located in Leuven.
Addex Therapeutics Ltd has leveraged more than a decade of research into addiction with a partnership that will see it co-develop a portfolio product with Indivior Plc, a London-listed and US headquartered specialty pharmaceutical company.
Belgium-based iTeos Therapeutics SA has regained rights to an early-stage cancer drug from Pfizer Inc which was being investigated in a Phase 1 trial as a potential single agent for treating patients with malignant gliomas.
BioNTech AG, Europe’s largest privately-held biotech company, has raised $270 million in a Series A financing round to advance a portfolio of oncology drugs tailored to individual cancers. The round was led by the Redmile Group and joined by the Struengmann Family Office, a founding investor.
Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has more than doubled the size of its corporate venture capital fund to €250 million in order to take advantage of new investment opportunities in start-up companies developing cell and gene therapies and products for infectious disease and cancer.
Netherlands-based ISA Pharmaceuticals BV has secured its first industrial collaboration for a product developed from its synthetic long-peptide portfolio, a deal which both validates the technology and illustrates the trend in immuno-oncology towards the development of combination therapies.
Roche has reached an agreement to acquire California, US- based Ignyta Inc for $1.7 billion, a company with small molecule therapies targeting kinases which have been activated by gene fusions – a class of oncogenes associated with both blood cancers and solid tumours.
Orchard Therapeutics Ltd has completed an oversubscribed $110 million Series B financing round to support its pipeline of gene therapies which is led by a clinical-stage product for the inherited disorder, adenosine deaminase severe combined immunodeficiency (ADA-SCID).
Orchard Therapeutics Ltd has obtained rights to technology developed by the French research institution Généthon to continue development of a new gene therapy for the immune deficiency, X-linked chronic granulomatous disease.