News

Publicly-listed Cytos Biotechnology Ltd has announced plans to merge with privately-owned Kuros Biosurgery Holding AG to create a new Switzerland-listed company that will be controlled by Kuros’ shareholders.

A UK spinout company, Kesios Therapeutics Ltd, has obtained £19 million in Series A financing to develop therapies targeting a complex that is downstream from a protein implicated in many cancers. The lead candidate is for multiple myeloma.

Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding AG has raised CHF 54.8 million (€50.38 million) in a private placement of its shares with investors in Switzerland and abroad to advance its portfolio of specialty medicines led by a treatment for a rare eye disease.

Geneva, Switzerland-based ObsEva SA has raised CHF 60 million (€54.87 million) in a Series B financing round to advance its portfolio of products that treat reproductive problems in women ranging from preterm labour to endometriosis.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected a new indication for Bristol-Myers Squibb’s checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab) saying that more data is required. The proposed indication is for BRAF V600 positive metastatic melanoma.

Following news in the UK in early November that a one-year-old baby girl with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL ) has been put into remission by UCART19, an unapproved therapy that required special permission to use, Laboratoires Servier acquired exclusive worldwide rights to the product and promptly did a deal with Pfizer Inc for the drug’s potential commercialisation. 

A new venture capital company with financial backing from the European Investment Fund (EIF) has been launched in Belgium to support start-up and early-stage life science companies in Europe. V-Bio Ventures has raised €63 million in the first closing of its first fund. 

Argenx NV, which engineers antibodies originating in llamas, has started clinical development of a fourth antibody with the result that the increase in its research and development expenditure was far larger than the increase in operating income in the first nine months.

With six clinical stage products in its pipeline, one of which recently entered Phase 3, Ablynx NV has moved closer to the goal of becoming a vertically integrated biopharmaceutical company. 

Faron Pharmaceuticals Oy of Finland has raised £10 million gross on the AIM market in London in order to help finance a Phase 3 trial of its agent for acute respiratory distress syndrome Traumakine, a recombinant human interferon beta-1a product.