Pfizer Inc has acquired a minority stake in privately-held AM-Pharma BV which has a Phase 2 product for acute kidney injury related to sepsis. The US company made an upfront payment of $87.5 million to AM-Pharma in early May for the stake, and also secured an exclusive option to buy the rest of the company.
Gilead Sciences Inc has acquired privately-held EpiTherapeutics ApS for $65 million in cash. The Denmark-based company has a library of small molecules that inhibit the epigenetic regulation of gene transcription which has uses in combating cancer.
Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc of the UK has raised $191.3 million in an initial public offering of its shares on Nasdaq. The offer of 11.25 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) was priced at $17 per share. Approximately 1.7 million shares have also been set aside for overallotments.
H. Lundbeck A/S of Denmark reported a 1% decline in revenue to DKK 3.56 billion (€0.48 billion) in the first quarter, while its year-earlier operating profit of DKK 569 million turned into a loss of DKK 32 million.
MorphoSys AG has acquired Lanthio Pharma BV of the Netherlands, a company with technology that can be used to identify peptides which are selective for a specific disease target and stabilise them for receptor binding.
Juno Therapeutics Inc, which has technology for genetically engineering T cells, has teamed up with Fate Therapeutics Inc to find out whether there is a role for small molecules in improving the profile of engineered T cells as therapies. The four-year collaboration takes T cell immunotherapy one step further by potentially introducing new modulators into the mix of technologies that are now being investigated globally for a wide range of cancers. The collaboration was announced on 6 May.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc reported sales of £5.6 billion for the first quarter, unchanged from a year earlier, and an operating profit of £1.3 billion, down by 15% as the group rebalanced its business with a greater focus on consumer healthcare.
Kymab Ltd of Cambridge UK has raised an additional $50 million in a Series B financing round bringing the total raised to $90 million. The new funds were provided by Woodford Patient Capital Trust Plc and Malin Corporation Plc, which itself recently raised €330 million in an initial public offering on the Irish Stock Exchange.
Bavarian Nordic A/S reported a 17.9% decline in revenue for the first 2015 quarter to DKK 234.8 million (€31.5 million) and a loss before interest and taxes of DKK 40.2 million compared with a year-earlier profit of DKK 3.4 million.
H. Lundbeck A/S has named Kåre Schultz, a Danish national, as its new president and chief executive officer, effective 20 May. Mr Schultz was most recently president and chief operating officer at Novo Nordisk A/S but left the company following a reorganisation of the executive management team.