News and Trends 19 Jan 2022 Engitix Builds Liver Disease Pipeline with Series A and Drug Collaboration With the close of its Series A round at €48M ($54M), the tissue models company Engitix has shifted its business from providing drug discovery services to developing its own treatment pipeline for liver diseases. When Engitix was spun out of University College London in 2016, the startup primarily aimed to provide tissue models to pharmaceutical […] January 19, 2022 - 3 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 18 Jan 2022 Ori Biotech Bags €88M Investment to Automate Cell Therapy Manufacture The UK company Ori Biotech has raised €88M ($100M) in Series B cash to ease the cell therapy manufacturing bottleneck using automation and standardized data collection. The round was 40% oversubscribed and led by the US investment firm Novalis LifeSciences. The Chinese investor Puhua Capital and Chimera Abu Dhabi joined the existing syndicate, which includes […] January 18, 2022 - 4 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 13 Jan 2022 Biotech Startup Incubators Prepare to Cash in on Record VC Funding Venture capital funding broke records in the biotech industry in 2021. Leading startup incubators from across Europe share their plans to make the most of this trend in 2022, with expectations for big returns and expansion in the works. In spite of financial volatility resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, the year 2021 broke records for […] January 13, 2022 - 7 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 11 Jan 2022 Sanofi Joins AI Gold Rush in €4.6B Drug Discovery Pact with Exscientia As big pharma companies flock to drug discovery collaborations with artificial intelligence (AI) firms, the French giant Sanofi has sealed a €4.6B deal with the UK AI player Exscientia to develop oncology and immunology treatments. According to the deal’s terms, the partners will develop up to 15 small molecule drugs to treat cancer and immunological […] January 11, 2022 - 4 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 17 Dec 2021 UK Startup Lands €5M Seed Round to Produce Gene-Edited Crops with AI Phytoform, a London- and Boston-based startup, has received a €5M ($5.7M) investment to develop gene-edited crops with the help of artificial intelligence tools. The firm expects to bring its first product, a weather-resistant tomato, to market in early 2022. The seed financing will fuel the development of Phytoform’s precision crop breeding platform, which specializes in […] December 17, 2021 - 4 minutesmins - By Dan Samorodnitsky Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 14 Dec 2021 ATP Blazes US Venture Capital Trail into European Biotech Startups The US venture capital firm Apple Tree Partners (ATP) is making its first transatlantic foray by launching the UK immuno-oncology company Adrendra Therapeutics. This happens as US investors increasingly search for value-for-money opportunities in early-stage European biotech startups. Last week, the life science-focused investor ATP contributed €47M (£40M) to the Series A launch of immunotherapy […] December 14, 2021 - 4 minutesmins - By Anita Chakraverty Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 22 Nov 2021 Investors Flock to Startups Reprogramming Cell Therapies Painstaking and expensive procedures are required to produce human cells for use in research and cell therapies. Investors are seeking stakes in cell reprogramming startups that can free up the bottleneck, such as Mogrify, bit.bio, and Asgard Therapeutics. The concept of cell reprogramming — converting one type of cell into another — has been hot […] November 22, 2021 - 7 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 12 Nov 2021 Big Pharma Strikes Megadeals In Targeted Protein Degradation With many targeted protein degraders hitting the clinic, lucrative collaborations and acquisitions are being signed between biotech startups and big pharma in this upcoming area. Novartis, Pfizer, and Bayer have all negotiated billion Euro deals this year with smaller biotechs including Dunad Therapeutics, Arvinas, and Vividion Therapeutics. The big pharma companies aim to gain a […] November 12, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Anita Chakraverty Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 28 Oct 2021 DNA Manufacturing Startups Net Venture Capital Windfalls Touchlight Genetics and DNA Script have closed major venture financing rounds in the last month as investor excitement mounts over the next generations of DNA manufacturing. DNA Script made a big splash in Paris this week as it raked in €142M in Series C funding. The company will ramp up the commercialization of its benchtop […] October 28, 2021 - 6 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 15 Oct 2021 Third-Generation DNA Sequencing Shines with Oxford Nanopore’s IPO Oxford Nanopore Technologies, until recently one of very few unicorns in the European biotech industry, had a stellar IPO on the London Stock Exchange late last month. This is ushering in a whole new generation of DNA sequencing, genetics research, and diagnostics. During the first day of the IPO, which bagged the firm over €400M […] October 15, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Victor Kotsev Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 7 Oct 2021 Exscientia IPO Attracts Tech Investor Bets to AI Drug Discovery Exscientia’s lucrative entry onto the Nasdaq last week demonstrated investors are still excited by efforts to use artificial intelligence to fuel drug discovery, with global tech investors often taking the lead. The Oxford, UK-based company Exscientia has one of the most mature artificial intelligence (AI)-focused drug discovery pipelines, alongside companies like BenevolentAI in the UK, […] October 7, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Mark Zipkin Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 24 Sep 2021 Breath Testing To Be Tapped by UK Pioneer with €50M Fundraising After years of under-fulfilled promise, breath tests for cancer, liver disease, and respiratory conditions appear to be taking off with UK biotech Owlstone Medical raking in almost €50M (£42M) in an oversubscribed Series D funding round. The round, whose original target was about €43M, was led by the Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures and was joined […] September 24, 2021 - 3 minutesmins - By Victor Kotsev Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email