Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford spin­out Ox­ford Nanopore has raised a mon­ster round for its “scal­able” DNA and RNA se­quenc­ing tech ahead of a re­port­ed IPO fil­ing in Lon­don.

Once caught up in the Wood­ford de­ba­cle, the se­quenc­ing group has raised £195 mil­lion — $273 mil­lion — with the help of a ros­ter of new in­vestors. Temasek, Welling­ton Man­age­ment, M&G In­vest­ments and Nikon pitched in £125 mil­lion of that while ex­ist­ing in­vestors ponied up the rest.

Reuters re­port­ed re­cent­ly that the se­quenc­ing out­fit has signed up bankers for a sprint to the Lon­don ex­change in the sec­ond half of the year.

IP Group — a backer which it­self com­mit­ted £18.7 mil­lion to the round — re­ports that the com­pa­ny now has a val­u­a­tion of about $3.4 bil­lion, with its stake worth £359 mil­lion. — John Car­roll

Ac­er­a­gen ac­quires high­ly-an­tic­i­pat­ed Far­ber dis­ease treat­ment

Ac­er­a­gen is ac­quir­ing a com­pa­ny’s lead en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py can­di­date for Far­ber dis­ease, and en­ter­ing a $35 mil­lion part­ner­ship to fund the de­vel­op­ment pro­gram in­to a po­ten­tial reg­is­tra­tional study.

The com­pa­ny an­nounced the ac­qui­si­tion of En­zy­vant’s en­zyme re­place­ment ther­a­py RVT-801 for re­com­bi­nant hu­man acid ce­rami­dase de­fi­cien­cy that presents as Far­ber dis­ease. Ac­er­a­gen will al­so en­ter a fi­nanc­ing agree­ment with No­vaQue­st Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment to fund the drug’s de­vel­op­ment.

En­zy­vant will re­ceive up to $226 mil­lion, as well as tiered roy­al­ties on net sales, the com­pa­ny said in a re­lease Mon­day. In 2019, the agent was grant­ed rare pe­di­atric dis­ease and fast track des­ig­na­tions from the FDA.

There is no known cure for Far­ber’s dis­ease, which builds up harm­ful lev­els of lipids in the joints, tis­sues and cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. It is caused by mu­ta­tions in the ASAH1 gene and caus­es a de­fi­cien­cy of acid ce­rami­dase, a nat­ur­al lyso­so­mal en­zyme. Pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment has been com­plet­ed, in­clud­ing in vi­vo proof of con­cept in a mouse mod­el of Far­ber’s dis­ease.

With the ac­qui­si­tion comes sev­er­al com­plet­ed tox­i­col­o­gy stud­ies, a quan­ti­ta­tive pa­tient re­search study and a nat­ur­al his­to­ry study in pa­tients with Far­ber’s dis­ease that high­lights the pro­gres­sion and im­pact of the con­di­tion, CEO John Tay­lor said in a state­ment.

“The Ac­er­a­gen team is de­light­ed to an­nounce the strate­gic trans­ac­tion with En­zy­vant and the re­la­tion­ship we have es­tab­lished with No­vaQue­st to con­tin­ue the de­vel­op­ment of ACG-801. This pro­gram is based on the foun­da­tion­al work of Dr. Ed Schuch­man at the Ic­ahn School of Med­i­cine at Mount Sinai, es­tab­lish­ing the po­ten­tial to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing pathol­o­gy of Far­ber dis­ease, a ge­net­ic de­fi­cien­cy of acid ce­rami­dase,” Tay­lor said.

— Josh Sul­li­van

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”