DUBLIN – Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc and Malin Corp. plc have co-invested in a $50 million extension to Kymab Ltd.'s series B round, in a transaction that brings two more deep-pocketed investors into the Cambridge, UK-based antibody technology firm.
DUBLIN – Bidding to become the second European firm to win a gene therapy approval, Glaxosmithkline plc filed a marketing authorization application (MAA) with the EMA for GSK2696273, a treatment for severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome associated with adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID) in patients for whom bone marrow transplants are not possible.
DUBLIN – Blueprint Medicines Corp. blew away whatever market jitters were apparent earlier this week by raising $147 million in a heavily oversubscribed and upsized IPO, which it priced at $18 per share, above its indicative range of $15 to $17 per share.
DUBLIN – Crispr Therapeutics AG raised $64 million in new funding, bringing in two heavyweight strategic investors, London-based Glaxosmithkline plc, through its SR One venture capital arm, and Celgene Corp., to advance its development of novel therapies based on Crispr-Cas9, the genome editing technology that has taken the academic world by storm since its emergence in 2012.
DUBLIN – Galapagos NV piled on the good news for investors Tuesday, unveiling 12-week phase IIb rheumatoid arthritis (RA) data for its selective Janus kinase 1 (JAK1) inhibitor filgotinib as a monotherapy, which could eventually help to line it up as a potential contender in first-line therapy but in the short term confirms the strong efficacy signal it recently reported from a phase IIb trial of the drug administered in combination with methotrexate.
Versant Ventures has achieved significant validation – potentially $485 million worth of it – for its build-to-sell investment model, as Celgene Corp. exercised an option to acquire portfolio company Quanticel Pharmaceuticals Inc.
DUBLIN – Biotie Therapies Oyj is going for broke by dramatically restructuring its capital base in order to fund phase III trials of its Parkinson's disease drug, tozadenant (SYN115).
DUBLIN – Has the era of truly personalized cancer immunotherapy begun? Biontech AG certainly thinks so – and the German biotech firm has published in vivo proof-of-concept data in the April 23, 2015, issue of Nature to back up its claims.
PARIS – In Europe, patient involvement in drug development and regulatory assessment is evolving from an ad hoc occurrence into a more structured process, driven by a shared interest on the part of regulators and drug developers in having patient input influence the development and assessment process.
PARIS – Refinement of the EMA's rules for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), which came into effect in 2009, is ongoing, but, so far at least, there is little evidence to suggest that the legislation has been an enabler for companies developing cell therapies or gene therapies.
