DUBLIN – The heads of the European Union's member states are due to agree on the ground rules for the contest to decide on a new location for the London-based EMA during a European Council meeting in Brussels this coming Thursday. The beauty pageant involving more than a dozen European cities will then begin in earnest, with a winner expected to be named in October.
DUBLIN – ADC Therapeutics Sarl, an emerging powerhouse in the development of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for cancer, has made its first clinical data disclosures in hematological malignancies, which will propel the company into the heart of the battle for supremacy against both developers of ADCs and of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies.
DUBLIN – Shares in Probiodrug AG climbed by almost 19 percent during early trading Monday on topline data from an exploratory phase IIa trial of its first-in-class glutaminylcyclase (QC) inhibitor PQ912 in early stage Alzheimer's disease patients. The stock subsequently shed most of those gains, however, as investors opted to take some profit now instead of waiting for the early stage program to deliver more solid data further down the line.
DUBLIN – Eli Lilly and Co. is paying Keybioscience AG $55 million up front and is also on the hook for potential milestone payments arising from an alliance focused on a new drug class, dubbed dual amylin calcitonin receptor agonists (Darcas), in development for diabetes and other metabolic diseases.
DUBLIN – Bicycle Therapeutics Ltd. received another hefty dose of validation for its constrained peptide technology in the form of a £40 million (US$51.5 million) series B round, which will enable it to take multiple programs into clinical development. "What we would have hated to happen would be for the whole technology, the whole company, to be judged based on one spin of the cards," CEO Kevin Lee told BioWorld Today.
DUBLIN – Inthera Bioscience AG raised CHF10.5 million (US$10.8 million) in a series A round to further its development of small-molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions, one of the most important frontiers in drug discovery.
DUBLIN – Harpoon Therapeutics Inc. has landed a $45 million series B round to enable it to further develop its distinctive approach to the discovery of post-antibody scaffolds with multiple specificities.
DUBLIN – Vesalius Biocapital Partners Sàrl has responded to Boston's gravitational pull by putting in place a plan to establish a presence in the world's foremost biotech hub as it raises €150 million (US$166.7 million) for its third fund, Vesalius Biocapital III (VBC III). The Luxembourg-based fund disclosed a first closing of €65 this week and is on track to complete the fundraising process during the third quarter of next year.
