LONDON – Closing the year with some cheer for the sector, Tissue Regenix Group plc has raised £25 million (US$39 million) in a placing, enabling the regenerative medicine specialist to begin to advance several programs in parallel. Read More

LONDON – The health care sector in Europe has joined forces to push for industry involvement in the health technology assessments (HTA) that are increasingly being carried out to measure the added-value of new therapies, and then used as the basis of deciding whether or not to pay for them. Read More

LONDON – A potent and rapid new method for analyzing the function of any mammalian gene is set to revolutionize the study of genetics. For the first time, scientists have managed to produce and grow mammalian embryonic stem cells containing only half the normal complement of chromosomes – a goal that researchers have striven to achieve for decades. Read More

Molecular Partners AG entered a strategic alliance with Janssen Biotech Inc., under which it will team up with the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary to develop a broad pipeline of drugs, based on its Darpin scaffold technology, for a range of immunology indications. Read More

EMBL Ventures GmbH took in €40 million (US$53.5 million) in a first closing of its second fund, bringing an additional tranche of early stage investment to Germany's cash-starved biotechnology sector. And it hopes to add at least another €10 million in a second closing. Read More

As crunch time looms for TopoTarget A/S's lead pipeline molecule belinostat, which is undergoing a pivotal Phase II trial in 129 patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), the company is cutting almost 40 percent of its Danish workforce in order to conserve cash and focus its resources. Read More

• Beactica AB, of Uppsala, Sweden, inked an agreement with Almac Discovery Ltd., of Craigavon, Northern Ireland, for the use of its drug discovery platform, Sprint, to identify high-quality fragment hits against undisclosed targets of therapeutic interest to Almac. Beactica specializes in surface plasmon resonance biosensor-based small-molecule interaction analysis and partnerships for fragment-based lead generation using the Sprint platform. Read More