News

Germany-based Wellington Partners has closed its fifth life sciences fund with a capital raise of €210 million for investments in companies developing medicines, devices, diagnostics and digital technologies. The new fund will primarily target opportunities in Europe.

It expects to invest in approximately 15 to 20 companies with a particular focus on German-speaking geographies. It will however also consider opportunities in North America and Asia.

The French company, Alizé Pharma 3, has raised €67 million in a Series A financing round to advance two preclinical products for rare endocrine and metabolic diseases into clinical development. The funding round was led by Life Sciences Partners of the Netherlands and included Novo Ventures, Kurma Partners, Orbimed, Pontifax, Partners Innovation Fund and Innobio 2, which is managed by Bpifrance.

Zambon Company SA has extended its presence in respiratory medicines with the acquisition of Breath Therapeutics Holding BV, a clinical-stage company with a product for treating patients with lung transplants who are at risk of dying because of a condition known as bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS).

Sanofi SA reported a 5.5% increase in sales to €8.6 billion in the second quarter but its operating result was negative after the company wrote down intangible assets of €1.8 billion when sales of the recently acquired haemophilia A drug, Eloctate, failed to meet expectations.

AstraZeneca Plc secured an increase in product sales of 12% to $11.2 billion in the first half, confirming the strength of its new portfolio of medicines which are heavily weighted by drugs for cancer. After several years of restructuring, the company revised its guidance upward for 2019. Product sales are now expected to increase by a low double-digit percentage instead of the previously forecast high single-digit increase.

The Roche group has raised its guidance for 2019 after sales of its new multiple sclerosis, haemophilia and cancer medicines more than offset a drop in income from the legacy breast cancer drug Herceptin and the autoimmune and cancer medicine Rituxan. Group sales are expected to show a mid to high-single-digit percentage increase this year, measured at constant exchange rates.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc reported higher sales in the second quarter and first half year, along with a better operating profit, despite price pressure on its respiratory division where the asthma medicine Advair faced generic competition for the first time. Sales in the second quarter were £7.8 billion, up by 7%, and in the first half they were £15.5 billion, up by 6%. Meanwhile operating profit, adjusted to exclude amortisation and restructuring costs, was £2.2 billion in the second quarter, up by 3% and £4.3 billion in the first half, up by 8%.

The World Health Organization has added several cancer therapies to its Essential Medicines List in recognition of their contribution to extending the lives of patients with cancer. The list, which is updated every two years, is intended to guide health authorities on which medicines represent the best value for money based on their effectiveness.

The second quarter and half year results of Novartis AG show a pharmaceutical company in transition rather than one where the figures are strictly comparable with the previous period.

Vasant Narasimhan, the Harvard University-educated doctor who became chief executive in February 2018 has been busy with his plans to streamline the company into a leader of advanced therapies, supported by digitally-backed research.

Sosei Heptares has entered into a multi-target research collaboration and licence agreement with Genentech to discover and develop medicines that modulate G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), membrane proteins that are involved in a broad range of biological processes and diseases.  GCPRs play a central role in cellular physiology including the regulation of the immune and nervous systems and the growth and metastasis of some types of tumours.