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. Read More
Revolution Medicines Inc., a California-based company developing a small-molecule inhibitor of SHP2 in partnership with Sanofi SA and other programs targeting mutant forms of the key signaling protein RAS, has raised a $100 million series C equity financing led by Boxer Capital LLC, an investment firm funded by British businessman Joe Lewis' Tavistock Group, which has backed financings of companies including G1 Therapeutics Inc., Kura Oncology Inc. and, more recently, Encoded Therapeutics Inc. Read More
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. Read More
The striking of a Health and Human Services (HHS) rule requiring TV ads for prescription drugs to include list prices may turn up the temperature on the political roasting of biopharma companies – and stoke the pressure for Congress to do something about those prices. Read More
Altimmune Inc. will acquire Spitfire Pharma Inc. and its lead candidate, SP-1373 (to be renamed ALT-801), a GLP-1/glucagon receptor co-agonist for treating nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Read More
Hesperos Inc.'s human-on-a-chip in vitro model for the first time successfully predicted human response to two drugs. The multi-organ model provided new insight into the drugs' cardiotoxic effects in a study published in Nature Scientific Reports. The Orlando, Fla.-based company also recently demonstrated that its model could simultaneously measure cancer drug efficacy and off-target toxicity without animal models or human testing. Read More
The World Health Organization (WHO) Tuesday updated its list of essential medicines, with a focus on cancer and other global health challenges. WHO added 28 drugs for adults and 23 for children to the medicines list and specified new uses for 26 drugs already on the list. Read More
GNS Healthcare Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., said it raised $23 million in a series D fundraising led by Cigna Ventures, a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of Cigna Corp., with participation from Amgen Ventures, Celgene Corp., Echo Health Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments and former Caesar's CEO and Aetna Division President Gary Loveman. Read More
Cytomx Therapeutics Inc., of South San Francisco, will receive a $10 million payment from Abbvie Inc., of North Chicago, for the selection of a second target under their 2016 collaboration to discover and develop Probody drug conjugates. Read More
