Probiodrug AG, a German specialist in Alzheimer’s disease, has raised €22.5 million with an initial public offering of its shares on the Amsterdam Euronext exchange. The offering of 1,524,205 shares was priced at €15.25 per share. Kempen & Co acted as the bookrunner.
Bavarian Nordic A/S, which for years has supplied the US government with smallpox vaccine for its emergency stockpile, has secured a major new deal with Johnson & Johnson Inc to develop a vaccine against the Ebola and Marburg viruses and explore additional disease targets.
Life science investors say they look for novel products that will meet an unfulfilled patient need. The proposition sounds straightforward. But how can you ever know in advance if you’re picking the best asset?
DBV Technologies SA, which is developing a patch for peanut allergies, has raised about €104.5 million in an international share offering most of which was in American depositary shares on Nasdaq in the US.
Forendo Pharma OY of Finland has secured €12 million from a syndicate of investors including Novartis Venture Fund and MS Ventures to bring a candidate drug for endometriosis into the clinic. The drug inhibits the enzyme 17-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase 1.
The European Medicines Agency said that it now has procedures in place to review data on candidate vaccines or therapies aimed at protecting or treating patients infected with the Ebola virus with a view to making these medicines available as quickly as possible.
Switzerland’s Actelion Ltd, which has a portfolio of treatments for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), reported significantly higher sales and earnings for the third quarter and the first nine months of 2014.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc is to seek £1 billion in new annual cost savings over three years as a 25% decline in sales of the respiratory product Advair continued to put pressure on the group’s financial performance.
Bluebird bio Inc has treated the first patient in a Phase 1/2 trial designed to establish the safety and efficacy of a gene therapy procedure in patients with sickle cell disease. This is reportedly the first ever gene therapy study in patients with this disorder.
Shire Plc said that it has agreed with AbbVie Inc to end their proposed merger, and that a break fee of $1.635 billion is now payable to it. The Dublin, Ireland-based company said it was well positioned to continue as an independent business.