News

Series B funding for Imara Inc

Country
United Kingdom

The London-based investment group, Arix Bioscience Plc, has co-led a $63 million investment round in Imara Inc, a US company developing a small molecule drug to treat sickle cell disease, a rare genetic blood disorder that can lead to organ injury. Joining Arix as co-leader of the Series B round was Orbimed Advisors.

MorphoSys at inflection point

Country
Germany

MorphoSys ended 2018 with cash of €454.7 million, higher royalty income from its partnered drug for plaque psoriasis, Tremfya, and plans for a US regulatory filing for MOR208, its first wholly-owned cancer drug. MOR208 is being developed to treat diffuse large B cell lymphoma, an aggressive lymphoma.

Brussels invites UK pharma

Country
Belgium

 Brussels has decided that this is the time when Britain’s biotech and pharmaceutical companies might be enticed into moving to Europe’s capital.

 Following the British Parliament’s rejection an agreed plan for withdrawal from the European Union, UK legislators have also rejected leaving the Union without any agreement. What this means is that Parliament will continue to muddle on. No one knows for how long or whether the Europe will put up with another lengthy dither.

Tecentriq in breast cancer

Country
United States

The checkpoint antibody Tecentriq (atezolizumab) received its fifth approval from the US Food and Drug Administration on 8 March – this time for triple-negative breast cancer. The approval is for the use of Tecentriq in combination with chemotherapy for patients with breast cancer whose tumours express the PD-L1 protein. Patients will be identified using a new FDA-approved assay.

Series A funding for Danish microbiome company

Country
Denmark

A young Danish company, SNIPR BIOME, that is using CRISPR/Cas technology to fight bacteria has raised $50 million in a Series A financing round co-led by Life Sciences Partners (LSP) and existing investor Lundbeckfonden Emerge. The North-East Family Office of Copenhagen, Denmark and Wellington Partners of Munich, Germany also participated in the round.

US proposes coverage for CAR T therapies

Country
United States

The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed to reimburse cancer treatments with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies under a policy called ‘Coverage with Evidence Development.” Currently there is no national Medicare policy for covering CAR T cell therapy so local Medicare contractors will have discretion over whether to pay for it. The proposed coverage would require Medicare to cover the therapy when it is offered in a CMS-approved registry or clinical study in which patients are monitored for at least two years after treatment.

Genmab’s cash balance rises

Country
Denmark

Genmab A/S ended 2018 with a cash balance of DKK 6.1 billion ($920 million), up by 13% from a year earlier as royalty revenue from its lead cancer product Darzalex (daratumumab), developed with Janssen Biotech Inc, continued to roll in. Darzalex is a monoclonal antibody that binds to the protein CD38 on multiple myeloma cells for the treatment of multiple myeloma. It is now approved for six indications in the US including, most recently, as a split dose regimen.

Pharming earns first profit

Country
Netherlands

With sales of its lead product booming – up by 51% in 2018 – the Pharming Group NV produced its first annual net profit since its founding in 1988.

Revenue from product sales rose to €134.3 million in 2018 from a restated €88.7 million in 2017 while net profit came to €24.9 million compared with a loss of €76.2 million in 2017.

Making this happen was a boom in sales of Ruconest, the company’s product for the treatment of hereditary angioedema (HAE), a condition that is estimated to affect up to 10,000 people in the US alone.

MolMed and Genenta extend oncology partnership

Country
Italy

MolMed SpA and Genenta Science SRL, both of Italy, have renewed and extended an oncology collaboration with a view to starting trials of a candidate drug that could treat both haematologic malignancies and solid tumours. Genenta has developed an ex-vivo immune-gene transfer technology to enable the targeting of immunomodulatory molecules to tumour-infiltrating monocytes and macrophages. The goal is to deliver an immunomodulatory molecule into the tumour microenvironment triggering an immune response against multiple tumour antigens.