DUBLIN – Shares in Polyphor AG dropped as much as 21% Wednesday as the company shut down two phase III trials of its lead drug candidate, murepavadin, a first-in-class intravenous antibiotic in development for hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP/VABP).

DUBLIN – In what is a truly transformative deal for each company, Gilead Sciences Inc. and Galapagos NV are entering a 10-year research and development alliance under which Galapagos is getting $3.95 billion up front in hard cash plus another $1.1 billion in equity, in return for which Gilead will essentially have an option to ex-European rights on everything emanating from the Belgium firm's clinical and preclinical pipeline. That includes six clinical-stage programs, another 20 in preclinical research and whatever else Galapagos may bring forward – or bring in through its own business development efforts – over the term of the agreement.

DUBLIN – Early stage vaccine developer Osivax SAS raised €8 million (U$9 million) in series A funding to continue development of a clinical-stage universal influenza vaccine, based on what it believes is a highly immunogenic method of presenting the viral nucleoprotein to the immune system.

DUBLIN – Biontech SE closed a mammoth $325 million series B round to fund expansion of its clinical pipeline and to continue its ongoing investments in several different areas of manufacturing. The scale of the deal is of historic proportions – it is the biggest private equity investment in any comparable European biotechnology firm. It just edges ahead of Oxford, U.K.-based Immunocore Ltd.'s $320 million investment in 2015. 

DUBLIN – Aicuris Anti-infective Cures GmbH is pursuing a novel approach to harnessing phage therapy in the fight against antibiotic-resistant infections, by in-licensing from Lysando AG a platform technology that relies on phage-encoded enzymes rather than the infectious particles themselves to lyse pathogenic bacteria. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal gives Aicuris exclusive access to Lysando's artilysin platform for pharmaceutical applications.

DUBLIN – European biotechnology firms engaged in drug discovery and development raised an aggregate $3.172 billion in equity investment during the first half of 2019, down 19% on the same period last year. Unless there is a substantial pickup in the third and fourth quarters, the sector's record-breaking 2018 total of $7.715 billion looks to be out of reach. 

Century Therapeutics Inc. came out of stealth mode Monday with $250 million in funding commitments from lead investor Bayer AG, founding investor Versant Ventures and strategic partner Fujifilm Holdings Corp. to develop next-generation allogeneic cell therapies for cancer, based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

DUBLIN – Modag GmbH closed a €12 million (US$13.6 million) series A round to move a small-molecule drug that targets toxic oligomeric forms of alpha-synuclein into clinical trials in multiple system atrophy (MSA).