PARIS – Curadigm SAS has raised $1 million in non-dilutive funding from Bpifrance (Banque publique d’investissement in France), for development of its Nanoprimer technology. Bpifrance’s Deep Tech program in France recognizes health tech companies with breakthrough innovation and strong commercial potential.

LONDON – Biofidelity Ltd. has raised US$12 million in a series A, enabling it to start commercialization of a novel, low-cost, chemistry-based diagnostic for detecting all actionable lung cancer mutations. The Cambridge, U.K.-based company claims the test can detect a single molecule of mutated DNA against the background of billions of healthy molecules in a patient sample, without the need for DNA sequencing.

LONDON – European scale-up of an artificial intelligence tool for stratifying and personalizing treatment of COVID-19 patients according to the type of complications they are likely to experience will get underway in September, following initial validation. The tool, developed by researchers at the Hospital Clinic Barcelona, Spain, was ‘trained’ on more than a trillion anonymized data points retrieved from the clinic’s electronic health records system.

Advanced talks between the European Commission and Curevac AG have positioned the company to potentially supply up to 405 million doses of its investigational mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine to the bloc. News of the progress, following similar EU-level talks with an alliance of Sanofi SA and Glaxosmithkline plc, Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca plc, sent Curevac's recently-listed U.S. shares (NASDAQ:CVAC) climbing 16% to $66 on Aug. 20.

Alcon AG released second-quarter results Aug. 18, reporting worldwide sales of $1.2 billion. That figure represented a decrease of 36%, or 34% on a constant currency basis, vs. the same period last year as COVID-19 hit all business categories. As Wells Fargo’s Larry Biegelsen noted, the Geneva-based company, which held its call Aug. 19, saw net loss per share coming in worse than expected due to higher selling, general and administrative expenses.

PARIS – Bellaseno GmbH recently completed a phase I trial of its Senella absorbable soft tissue reconstruction scaffold on an Australian patient with congenital pectus excavatum.

LONDON – A pan-European consortium backed by 11 pharma companies is pooling resources in a €77.7 million (US$92.5 million) five-year plan to advance development of therapeutics for COVID-19 and other coronaviruses.

LONDON – A large scale population study has shown that home self-testing with low-cost lateral flow diagnostics is a valid way of tracking the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 105,651 people across the U.K. tested themselves for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies with a fingerprick blood test as part of the REACT (REaltime Assessment of Community Transmission) study.

PARIS – Integragen SA and OncoDNA SA have signed a tender offer agreement anticipating a takeover bid. Gosselies, Belgium-based OncoDNA will purchase 100% of the shares of Integragen, floated on the Euronext Paris Euronext Growth Markets, at a unit price of $2.60, valuing the latter’s share capital at $17.2 million.

Reports out of Russia that the country approved a COVID-19 vaccine came with more questions than answers, as some in the rest of the world fretted over the apparently paltry degree of testing. Though the product has not completed phase III trials – human research thus far has involved only two groups of volunteers of 38 people each – Russia President Vladimir Putin is said to have declared Gam-COVID-Vac adequately studied.