Sanofi SA has raised $11.7 billion from the sale of most of its equity holding in Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, a close partner and co-developer of some of the French company’s most successful products. These include the anti-inflammatory drug Dupixent (dupilumab) which has been approved in the US for four indications. The transaction closed on 29 May.
AstraZeneca Plc has disclosed data from its Phase 3 trial of the lung cancer drug Tagrisso (osimertinib) after the trial was stopped in April because of strong efficacy signals. Tagrisso is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). The Phase 3 trial, called ADAURA, was treating patients with early-stage disease.
Amongst large pharma companies, Merck & Co Inc has kept its plans for responding to the coronavirus pandemic under the radar. This changed on 26 May, when the US company announced one acquisition and two collaborations aimed at developing both vaccines and a treatment for the disease.
Exscientia Ltd has raised $60 million in a Series C financing round led by Novo Holdings to expand its portfolio of drug candidates generated by the use of artificial intelligence. The company is a 2012 spin-out of the University of Dundee in the UK and is collaborating with several of the largest pharmaceutical companies to generate new small molecule drugs for a range of diseases.
Poxel SA has raised €17.7 million in a private share placement concurrent with the release of new preclinical data for one of its two clinical-stage compounds for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The studies suggested a possible benefit for the compound as a combination therapy, as well an agent for treating other metabolic diseases.
Accure Therapeutics of Barcelona, Spain has been launched by investors in order to develop new therapies for diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). A Series A financing round amounting to €7.6 million was announced on 26 May, led by Alta Life Sciences and supported by the Centre for Technological and Industrial Development, an organ of the Spanish state.
France-based Tollys SAS has raised €2.3 million to advance the preclinical development of its lead cancer immunotherapy, bringing the total amount raised to €6.4 million since the company was founded in 2015. The Series A financing round followed the achievement of preclinical proof-of-concept for the candidate drug TL-532.
Within a month of joining forces with the University of Oxford to develop a candidate vaccine for COVID-19, AstraZeneca Plc has secured manufacturing capacity to produce one billion doses of the prospective treatment as well as financial support of up to $1 billion from an agency of the US government.
The anti-inflammatory drug Dupixent (dupilumab) has generated positive data in a pivotal trial of patients with eosinophilic esophagitis, a chronic, allergic inflammatory disease of the esophagus. Part A of the Phase 3 trial, which enrolled patients 12 years and older, demonstrated significant clinical and anatomic improvements, including the ability to swallow, the developers Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc announced on 23 May.
Roche has expanded its diagnostic capabilities with the acquisition of Seattle, US-based Stratos Genomics Inc, an early-stage sequencing technology company. The deal was announced on 22 May but financial details were not disclosed.
Stratos has patented technology for converting DNA into polymers that are reportedly easy to read. In principle this makes it possible to sequence DNA at a higher speed and lower cost than existing methods. The technology is called sequencing by expansion (SBX) and will be used in a nanopore sequencer that is being developed by Roche.