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 26 Oct 2021 Valneva’s Inactivated Covid-19 Vaccine Aces Phase III Trial Last week, the French vaccine maker Valneva announced promising phase III trial results of its inactivated Covid-19 vaccine: a well-established technology that could confer broader immunity to the virus than shots currently on the market. Valneva’s vaccine candidate consists of a killed or ‘inactivated’ version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19. The vaccine was […] October 26, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Victor Kotsev Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 22 Oct 2021 Gene-Edited T Cell Therapy Players Battle Safety Doubts Confidence in gene-edited T cell therapies from donor cells has faltered as Allogene Therapeutics paused all clinical development following the detection of an unexpected genetic change in a clinical trial. Industry experts see these events as a reality check for the nascent field. Off-the-shelf treatments that use genetically engineered T cells to treat diseases suffered […] October 22, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Anita Chakraverty Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 19 Oct 2021 Biotech VCs Face Funding Bulge Amid Struggling Stock Markets Despite volatile biotech stocks limiting options for exit, Sofinnova Partners’ latest €472M fund highlights ballooning European venture capital and its growing focus on early-stage biotech investments. Biotech fundraising broke records in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe. This year seems set to continue biotech’s winning streak in private fundraising. One example is a […] October 19, 2021 - 5 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 12 Oct 2021 The Top European Biotech Investment Rounds in September Initial public offerings by European biotech companies were hot in September, and companies developing technologies including sequencing and bioinformatics received big private and public investments. Last month, European and Israeli biotech companies raised over €1.5B in 42 deals, which included initial public offerings (IPOs) and private financing rounds. This was more than triple the total […] October 12, 2021 - 4 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 11 Oct 2021 Longevity Foundation to Fund Geroscience Research with €860M The newly-created Longevity Science Foundation aims to extend the human lifespan to more than 120 years by channeling over €860M ($1B) into early-stage geroscience research in the next decade. Experts say that’s a worthy if complex goal. Based in Zug, Switzerland, the Longevity Science Foundation will prioritize four areas of research: personalized medicine, therapeutics, artificial […] October 11, 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 4 Oct 2021 Non-Viral Gene Therapies Get €51M Boost, Though Challenges Remain Although most gene therapy still relies on non-infectious viral vectors for delivery, a recent venture financing round for the Swiss company Anjarium Biosciences has shone the spotlight on alternative vectors, including lipid nanoparticles and electric pulses. Last month, Anjarium Biosciences raised €51M (CHF55.5M) in a Series A financing round to advance its gene delivery system […] October 4, 2021 - 5 minutesmins - By Victor Kotsev Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email
News and Trends 1 Oct 2021 Novo Nordisk Foundation Pumps €85M into Carbon Capture Research As pressure mounts to tackle climate change, the Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation has granted €84.7M to the world’s first research institution dedicated to capturing carbon dioxide from the air and harnessing the gas as a raw material. The new Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2 Research Center has the mission to efficiently capture, store, and recycle the […] October 1, 2021 - 6 minutesmins - By Anita Chakraverty 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
News and Trends 21 Sep 2021 Europe’s Antibiotic Investments Stagnate As Resistance Crisis Looms Despite the urgent danger of antibiotic resistance, investments into European biotech antibiotic players have remained flat. However, growing regulatory and societal awareness could spell fresh investments in the coming years. Over the last decade, pressure has been mounting on healthcare systems as infectious microbes become harder and harder to fight with antibiotics. Some strains of […] September 21, 2021 - 7 minutesmins - By Jonathan Smith Share WhatsApp Twitter Linkedin Email