Venture Funding Deals: Stem Cell Venture BlueRock Launches With Major Funding
Executive Summary
With backing from Bayer and others, the US-based venture will develop iPSC therapies for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases; other notable new financings involve Cerevance, Goldfinch Bio, NeuroPharma and Tenaya. Derived from Strategic Transactions, Informa’s premium source for tracking life sciences deal activity, the Venture Funding Deals column provides a comprehensive monthly review of emerging biopharmaceutical companies that have received venture funding. This month’s column covers deals announced November through December 2016.
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Deals in Depth: March 2024
Two $1bn+ alliances were penned in March. In the top alliance by deal value, Merus NV will use its Triclonics anitbody platform to discover new dual tumor-associated antigens targeting trispecific antibodies for Gilead Sciences. Merus will lead early-stage research activities for two programs, with an option to pursue a third. Gilead will have the right to license programs developed under the collaboration after the completion of select research activities. If Gilead exercises its option to license any such program from the collaboration, Gilead will be responsible for additional research, development and commercialization activities for such program. The deal could be worth up to $1.5bn for Merus.
Deals in Depth: February 2024
Just one $1bn+ alliance was penned in February, compared to ten in the previous month. In the top alliance by deal value, Neomorph and Novo Nordisk entered into a potential $1.46bn agreement for the discovery, development, and commercialization of molecular glue degraders (MGDs) for cardiometabolic and rare diseases. The collaboration brings together Novo Nordisk's expertise in those disease areas with Neomorph's MGD discovery platform. Neomorph will lead discovery and preclinical activities against selected targets with Novo Nordisk having the right to exclusively pursue further clinical development and commercialization of the compounds.