LONDON – Novo Holdings has inspired the formation of the second new fund in 18 months aiming to feed more capital into the commercialization of Scandinavian science, acting as cornerstone investor in Sound Bioventures Fund I. The new fund greeted the New Year with a first close of €110 million (US$124 million), to be invested in private biopharmas with late preclinical or clinical programs, primarily in rare diseases.

Nurix Therapeutics Inc.’s Dec. 12 disclosure that the U.K. Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency granted to clearance for the company to kick off a phase I study with Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor NX-5948 pumped more juice into the space, which has been consistently intriguing since the first drug in the class was approved about eight years ago by the FDA. The San Francisco-based firm will start an experiment in patients with relapsed and refractory B-cell malignancies at clinical sites in the U.K., with dosing of the first subject expected in the first half of 2022.

PARIS – Two months after successfully listing on Euronext Brussels and Euronext Amsterdam stock exchanges, raising nearly $100 million, Onward Medical NV reported completion of enrollment in its Up-LIFT study on its noninvasive electrical spinal cord stimulation, called Arc therapy.

It is acknowledged that the huge bias toward individuals of European ancestry means studies of the contribution of genetics to disease may not translate well to other ethnicities. That point is underlined in the first large-scale investigation of the population structure and demographic history of British Pakistanis, which shows an increased number and length of regions of homozygosity inherited from a common ancestor, and greatly elevated identity by descent, compared to the population at large.

It is acknowledged that the huge bias toward individuals of European ancestry means studies of the contribution of genetics to disease may not translate well to other ethnicities. That point is underlined in the first large-scale investigation of the population structure and demographic history of British Pakistanis, which shows an increased number and length of regions of homozygosity inherited from a common ancestor, and greatly elevated identity by descent, compared to the population at large.

PARIS – Bellaseno GmbH reported publication of first-in-human data for its 3D-printed biodegradable and highly porous Senella scaffold filled with autologous fat graft to correct a chest deformation in a 22-year-old patient with severe pectus excavatum. The article was published in the European Journal of Plastic Surgery.

An international study led by scientists at the University of Exeter in the U.K. suggests how to combine antibiotic and bacteriophage therapy optimally, in order to reduce antibiotic use and potentially prevent multidrug resistance in bacteria.

Astrazeneca plc has confirmed it is working with Oxford University to produce a vaccine against the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The Cambridge, U.K.-based pharma was one of the first to get a COVID-19 vaccine okayed by regulators, after acquiring rights to the shot from Vaccitech plc, a spin-out from Oxford University’s Jenner Institute specialist vaccine unit.

The U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has unveiled two guidances for the use of real-world evidence (RWE) in regulatory decision-making. The policy seems limited to pharmaceutical clinical trials, with no indication when it will be expanded to include medical technology.