Horizon Discovery Ltd has announced the final closing of its Series C funding round with share placements valued at £6.9 million. The total sum raised in the round is £18.2 million which will be used to advance its research tools including cell lines.
Bharatt Chowrira, the chief executive of Addex Therapeutics Ltd since August 2011, has stepped down from his position as the company takes steps to further reduce costs and seek financial support for its allosteric modulation drug platform.
Six new medicines have been recommended for marketing in Europe by the European Medicines Agency, including a new treatment for patients with multiple myeloma, a rare and incurable cancer of the bone marrow.
The ReNeuron Group Plc said it expects to seek final regulatory and ethical approvals in early July to start a Phase 2 study of its stem cell treatment for patients disabled by a stroke.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved two new drugs from GlaxoSmithKline Plc for patients with metastatic melanoma linked to specific gene mutations. These are the third and fourth melanoma drugs to be approved since 2011.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc has paid €250 million in cash for the Switzerland-based vaccine company, Okairos AG, which has developed technology applicable to both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine products.
Prosensa Holding BV of the Netherlands, which is developing an antisense oligonucleotide for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, has made a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public share offering.
Ugichem GmbH of Austria, which has developed a new antisense drug technology platform, has raised €2.25 million from public and private investors to advance preclinical drug candidates for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.
Research funded by a Norwegian-based group has recently shown that primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a rare disorder affecting the liver, is a distinct disease with its own genetic architecture. Previously it was thought to be a sub-set of inflammatory bowel disease. Published in Nature Genetics on 21 April, the research associates nine new genetic regions with PSC, raising the total to 16.
AstraZeneca Plc is to pay up to $443 million to acquire Omthera Pharmaceuticals Inc of Princeton, New Jersey, a five-year-old company with a single product – a late stage omega-3 free fatty acid composition to treat hypertriglyceridaemia.