Ever since the collapse of British Biotech more than a decade ago, the UK life science sector has been in the doldrums. However, the mood has shifted in the past 18 months as money has started to flow back into the sector.
Index Ventures, which started as a small Swiss venture capital company in 1996 with a pilot fund of $17 million and grew into a global growth investor with nearly $6 billion under management, is splitting off its life science business from the rest of the company into an independent organisation that has been incorporated as Medicxi Ventures (UK) LLP.
Novo Nordisk A/S had a banner year in 2015 with a double-digit increase in revenue and a rise in operating income that was above the company’s own long-term target. However, a slower rate of growth is anticipated for 2016.
Enyo Pharma SAS of France has secured €22 million in a Series A funding round to accelerate development of its lead treatment for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection which targets interactions in the cell that enable the virus to replicate.
AstraZeneca Plc expects to see a decline in both revenue and earnings per share this year as the statin Crestor loses exclusivity in the US making way for the market entry of lower priced generic products. Partially offsetting this will be revenue from new products and tight cost controls.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc expects its core earnings to return to growth in 2016 on the back of sales of new products, costs savings and the completion of an asset swap with Novartis which has left it with a large vaccine business and majority control of a new joint venture consumer products company.
Mission Therapeutics Ltd of the UK has raised £60 million in a series C financing round to support the development of enzyme inhibitors that are thought to have the potential of targeting difficult-to-treat cancers as well as neurodegenerative diseases.
After discovering a way to produce insulin-producing beta cells from stem cells, US scientists have now shown that they can encapsulate these cells in an alginate and safely transplant them into mice. Moreover, the transplanted cells were shown to produce insulin and maintain blood glucose levels in the mice for 174 days.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the first drug to show a survival benefit in liposarcoma, a type of soft tissue sarcoma that is difficult to diagnose and treat. The drug, Halaven (eribulin mesylate), is a chemotherapy developed by Eisai Inc.
Two new studies relating to ovarian cancer have yielded information about the genetic background to the disease, as well as evidence that improving a test linked to ultrasound diagnosis can produce a better classification of ovarian tumours. The studies appeared in separate journals on 19 January.