UK-based Nightstar Ltd has recruited David Lubner to its board of directors less than a month after raising $45 million in a Series C financing round to advance its lead gene therapy product for choroideremia, an inherited cause of progressive blindness.
Ablynx NV has secured a collaboration with Sanofi SA to develop products directed at immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. The deal, which includes an upfront payment of €23 million, is the latest endorsement of the Belgian company’s therapeutic protein platform.
Sanofi has taken steps to broaden its vaccine portfolio with the planned acquisition of Protein Sciences Corp of Meriden, Connecticut, US which has a protein-based influenza vaccine recently approved for the US market.
Syncona Investment Management Ltd, an investment company in which the Wellcome Trust has a significant holding, reported total net assets of £895 million at the end of its fiscal year on 31 March, up from £472 million a year earlier. This follows its merger in November 2016 with BACIT Ltd, an investor in diversified portfolios based in the Guernsey Islands.
A UK-based company that uses artificial intelligence for drug discovery has entered into a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline Plc to discover candidate small molecules against up to 10 disease-related targets. Exscientia Ltd is a 2012 spin-out of the University of Dundee.
Evotec AG has expanded its capacity to discover new drugs through the use of adult stem cells that have been reprogrammed to produce any type of cell in the human body. These induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be used to model disease and identify prospective treatments.
Netherlands-based BioGeneration Ventures has secured new commitments for its third investment fund, BGV III, enabling it to expand the number of companies to which it provides seed capital. The new commitments raise the fund’s capital to €66 million.
China’s Creat Group Corp, one of the country’s large investors in foreign companies, is purchasing Germany’s Biotest AG, a Frankfurt Stock Exchange-listed biologics company, for about €1.2 billion.
A UK medical charity has decided that royalty income from intellectual property that it licensed to the developers of Keytruda, should be reinvested in innovation. The charity, LifeArc, has therefore set up two new funds to support academic research and early-stage biotech companies.
It has been a little more than a year since Medicxi Ventures (UK) LLP was spun out of Index Ventures to provide capital to early life science in Europe. Now, the venture fund has expanded its reach with the launch of a new fund that will finance later stage assets.