DUBLIN – The fundraising momentum the European biopharmaceutical sector developed in the final week of September continued into the early weeks of the fourth quarter, with substantial levels of private and public investment activity in evidence across multiple geographies and markets.

Last week alone, European firms engaged in drug development collectively raised about $208 million in equity funding. Lille, France-based Genfit SA took in another €180 million (US$213 million) in an offering of convertible bonds.

Neuroscience drug developer Bioarctic AB, of Stockholm, provided strong evidence that the Nasdaq market in Stockholm has a renewed appetite for biotechnology. It raised SEK600 million (US$74 million) Thursday by pricing an upsized IPO of 25 million shares at SEK24 per share. An overallotment option, if exercised, would push the total value of the transaction to SEK805 million. Shares in the company began trading Thursday under the ticker symbol BIOA B. The stock peaked at SEK32 Friday before ending the week at SEK29.1, implying a market capitalization of SEK2.56 billion.

It's the fourth – and largest – biopharma IPO in Stockholm to top $40 million this year, following those of Bonesupport Holding AB ($57 million), Isofol Medical AB ($48 million) and Oncopeptides AB ($73 million) and demonstrates that the country is again able to mobilize substantial levels of capital following a long run that was dominated by microcaps completing small-scale transactions.

On Nasdaq, meanwhile, women's health specialist Obseva SA, of Geneva, raised $60 million in a secondary offering of shares and warrants directed at new and existing institutional investors, to add to the $96.8 million it grossed in an IPO in January.

Two more European firms are currently taxiing toward the Nasdaq runway. Nanobody developer Ablynx NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, which is already listed on Euronext in Brussels, filed for a $150 million IPO on Nasdaq following a positive read-out from a phase III trial of caplacizumab in acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (aTTP), a rare blood coagulation disorder.

Erytech Pharma SA, of Lyon, France, is seeking $100 million to fund a phase III trial in the U.S. and Europe of Graspa (eryaspase), an E. coli version of asparaginase encapsulated within red blood cells. The therapy is a well-established method of starving tumor cells of asparagine – Graspa is aimed at cancer patients who are allergic to the enzyme. If successful, the IPO raise would come on top of a $75 million offering on its home Euronext market, which Erytech completed in April. (See BioWorld Today, April 17, 2017.)

Another Lyon firm, Theranexus SAS, is at an earlier stage of development, but it has developed a novel way of repurposing existing drugs, which offers its accelerated development pathway on either side of the Atlantic. The company was established in 2013 by two former researchers at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Franck Mouthon and Mathieu Charvériat, who discovered that the cross-talk between glial cells and neurons is altered in the presence of CNS drugs in a way that undermines the efficacy of those very drugs.

They found that glial cell networks, formed through gap junctions between adjoining cells, expand in the presence of certain CNS drug and that expansion both curtails the drug's effectiveness, while also giving rise to increased CNS tolerability issues, such as headache.

Theranexus is deploying drug combinations, comprising a therapeutic CNS drug paired with a connexin modulator, in order to minimize the size of the supporting glial cell network and to focus the drug on its main target area. Its lead program, THN102, pairs modafinil, a stimulant used for treating narcolepsy and excess sleepiness in Parkinson's disease, with flecainide, an antiarrhythmic agent, which also has activity on connexins, the small molecules that signal across gap junctions.

"We are using doses of these drugs that are far below the doses of the drugs as they are currently licensed," Chief Business Officer Julien Veys told BioWorld. "For us the main challenge is to be able to prove the superiority of the combination over the standalone drug."

It has already demonstrated the feasibility of the approach in a sleep deprivation study in healthy volunteers. "Based on the result we had in the sleep deprivation study, this was the proof of concept in man," Vey said. A phase II trial is underway in narcolepsy and a second will begin later this year to treat excess sleepiness in Parkinson's. It is lining up several other pairs of CNS drugs and gap junction modulators for additional indications, including Alzheimer's disease

And it is now seeking about €18 million in an IPO on Euronext for which it has set an indicative price range of €14 to €18.80 per share. The subscription period runs from Oct. 11 through Oct. 25 and the company will also undertake a global offering on Oct. 25. It has already received advance commitments totaling €10.9 million.

On the private funding side, meanwhile, Germany continues to show signs of life. A week after Tuebingen-based T-cell therapy developer Immatics AG raised $58 million in a series E round, Inflarx GmbH took in $30 million in a series D financing. The Jena-based firm is clearly setting its sights on Nasdaq. Its new investment round attracted a who's who of U.S. institutional and crossover investors, including Bain Capital Life Sciences LP, Cormorant Asset Management LLC and RA Capital Management LLC, who co-led the round and additional undisclosed investors. The transaction also involved a $25 million secondary share sale, which, provided some of its earlier investors with a complete or partial exit. The company will use the cash to move IFX-1, a first-in-class antibody that selectively targets complement factor C5a, into a phase IIb trial in undisclosed autoimmune indications. It declined to comment on the transaction Friday.