News

Paris-based Sofinnova Partners has launched a new €275 million fund to expand the scope of its investments in life science to include late-stage private and public companies primarily located in Europe.

Subject to approval from US regulators, Bayer AG hopes to conclude its $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co in the second quarter. The transaction would be the third merger of its kind in just under 12 months, illustrating the global consolidation of the agrochemical and seed businesses. This is being enabled by biotechnology, which makes it possible for crops to be engineered to resist insects, and digital technology which gives farmers new tools for managing their fields.

Evotec AG plans to swap its German legal structure for a form of European incorporation that will enable it operate across European borders without the need for a network of subsidiaries. The European incorporation, Societas Europaea, SE, is part of the still-evolving European capital market.

Vobarilizumab, a protein therapeutic that showed efficacy at Phase 2 in rheumatoid arthritis, has failed to meet the primary endpoint of dose response in a separate Phase 2 study of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, which only recently launched an agreed bid for the Belgian cell therapy company TiGenix NV, has confirmed that it is “considering making an approach” to Shire Plc – a much larger company. Shire responded that “it has not received an approach from Takeda.”

GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to take full control of a joint consumer products venture that it set up with Novartis in 2014 as part of an asset swap agreement that also saw the UK company buy Novartis’ vaccines business and sell many of its oncology assets.

SafeHeal SAS, a French company with a medical device to help patients recover from bowel surgery, has received €6 million in Series A financing from investors led by Sofinnova Partners. The funds will support a study that is being run to obtain a CE mark in Europe, and commercial development.

A 2005 spinout of Oxford University, Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd, has raised £100 million from international investors for the commercial development of a suite of devices that sequence DNA and RNA in real time for use in medicine and environmental research.

MorphoSys AG has announced plans for a US share offering following a year in which its lead lymphoma antibody MOR208 received a ‘breakthrough therapy’ designation from the Food and Drug Administration and a second product based on its technology was launched by Janssen Biotech.

Netherlands-based Escalier Biosciences BV has raised $19 million in a Series B financing round to bring a topical compound into the clinic for the treatment of psoriasis. The first clinical study is expected to start in mid-2018.