DUBLIN – AC Immune SA closed a CHF42.7 million (US$43.5 million) series E round, taking to CHF126.7 million the total investment it has raised since its inception in 2003 and taking the year's running total for private equity financing of European biopharma to $725 million.

DUBLIN – Sanofi SA CEO Olivier Brandicourt turned up the heat on Medivation Inc. Thursday, by publicly releasing another letter to the company's board in support of its $9.3 billion cash bid, just hours ahead of Medivation's first quarter earnings call.

DUBLIN – Sanofi SA CEO Olivier Brandicourt veered in the direction of hostile territory Thursday by going public with a $9.3 billion all-cash offer for Medivation Inc., following a month of behind-the-scenes overtures that failed to arouse any interest.

DUBLIN – Argenx NV is getting $40 million up front plus up to $645 million in milestones in an immuno-oncology pact with Abbvie Inc., based around its first-in-class, preclinical antibody, ARGX-115, which inhibits Garp, a novel target involved in maintaining the immunosuppressive activity of regulatory T-cells.

DUBLIN – Promethera Biosciences SA is acquiring the principal assets and expertise of Cytonet GmbH & Co KG in a stock-based deal that will combine two organizations focused on developing cell therapies for diseases of the liver.

DUBLIN – Even if the U.S. public markets are cooling on European biotech, a clutch of recent transactions suggests that companies' home markets still remain supportive. Financing activity has been sluggish this year, in contrast with last year, but a trickle of cash is still flowing into European biotech.

DUBLIN – Forbion Capital Partners raised €183 million (US$208 million) for its third fund, Forbion Capital Fund III (FCF III), taking its total funds under management to about €700 million.

HAMBURG – The blame game is a favored industry pastime, and drug regulators were set up to get it in the neck on the final day of the DIA Europe meeting, in an Oxford-style debate on the motion: This house believes that overengineered clinical development has inhibited innovation.

HAMBURG – By late Wednesday afternoon, 18 drug developers filed applications for inclusion in the first batch of projects to benefit from a suite of regulatory supports under the EMA's priority medicines initiative, Prime, which aims to accelerate the development and approval of medicines with the potential to make significant clinical impact in areas of unmet medical need.