Denmark-based Abacus Medicine A/S announced on 29 May that it was postponing an initial public offering planned for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange because of unfavourable market conditions. The parallel trade company was reportedly planning to raise €50 million to finance expansion.
The company’s biggest market is Germany where it sells drugs purchased at cheaper prices in other European markets.
It is estimated that up to 7% of patients with pancreatic cancer have a mutation in the tumour suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, impairing the body's ability to repair damaged DNA and allowing tumours to grow. BRCA mutations also drive ovarian and breast cancers, but they can be particularly lethal in pancreatic tumours because this cancer is difficult to detect at an early stage.
Novo Holdings A/S is to make an equity investment of up to £53.5 million in Oxford Biomedica Plc which has grown a business around the supply of lentiviral vectors for third parties including Novartis, the developer of Kymriah, the first gene therapy for cancer to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Following the transaction Novo will have a stake of up to 10.1% in the UK company.
Novartis has decided to price its new gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy using a formula that measures the performance of the drug over five years. The therapy, Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi), is a one-time treatment for a genetic disease that affects a child’s ability to swallow and breath, frequently leading to death.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a gene therapy to treat children under the age of two years who have spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disease that affects a child’s ability to swallow and breath, frequently leading to death.
Evotec SE is to expand its pharmaceutical services business into biologics with the acquisition of Just Biotherapeutics Inc of Seattle, Washington, US. The deal will give the Germany-based company a capacity to discover and develop protein therapeutics in addition to its existing small molecule business. Evotec will pay an initial $60 million for the company, a figure that could rise to $90 million depending on the achievement of certain milestones within the next three years.
Syncona Ltd, an active investor in cell and gene therapy, has launched a new company, Quell Therapeutics Ltd, which will develop cell therapies to treat autoimmune conditions based on engineered T regulatory (Treg) cells. Tregs are a subset of T cells with the potential to down-regulate the immune system.
Rinri Therapeutics Ltd, a spin-out of Sheffield University in the UK, has received £1.4 million in seed funding from a European syndicate in order to advance a prospective stem cell therapy to restore hearing. The company aims to reverse neuropathic sensorineural hearing loss by repairing the damaged cytoarchitecture of the inner ear.
Storm Therapeutics Ltd has raised an additional £14 million in Series A money bringing the total for the early investment round up to £30 million. The new money includes funding from the new investor, Seroba Life Sciences, as well as from existing investors, Cambridge Innovation Capital, M Ventures, Pfizer Ventures, Taiho Ventures and IP Group
The extension will enable to the company to advance its preclinical pipeline of products that modulate RNA modifying enzymes for oncology.
Storm Therapeutics announced the new financing on 20 May 2019.
A new French company working in the field of stem cell culture has raised €7.1 million in a Series A financing round to advance its technology for mass producing stem cells. TreeFrog Therapeutics SAS was founded in November 2018 on the basis of years of academic research.