French industrial biotech company Afyren announced a capital increase of €21m in a financing round led by  Sofinnova Partners and Valquest Partners to scale up its biobased organic acid production to industrial scale.

After a quick start out the gates in 2012, the European Commission proceeded to carry out a lengthy review of its bioeconomy strategy – slamming the brakes on investor interest in EU bio­techs developing solutions for the move to a low-carbon, zero-waste economy. Following several reports that suggested the bloc will miss internationally agreed sustainability targets, the EC now wants to speed up the switch to biobased production. Industry stakeholders presented a huge range of promising technologies at the EFIB, but are still awaiting the go-ahead.

Biotech Campus Delft, Royal DSM and YES!Delft partner up have launched a Biotech Validation Lab to validate the business concepts of European biotech startups.  

Gene therapy uniQure NV (Amsterdam) reported that factor IX levels of patients with severe hemophilia B raised to a mean of 38% of normal 12 weeks after a single injection of AMT-061.

Ose Immunotherapeutics has got the first milestone payment within its €272m deal with Servier inked in 2016.

Analyses of the stroma cell proteome have revealed how intratumoral hypoxia triggers the formation of dysfunctional blood vessels that block drugs from entering the tumour and push metastasis.  

Kiadis Pharma N.V., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, on Monday announced the appointment of Robert Friesen, PhD as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) effective February 1, 2019.

Jennewein Biotechnologie and Asia’s largest dairy company Yili Group have joined forces to develop an innovative infant formula tailored to the Chinese market.

Sosei Group Corporation has spun out two programmes of its neurology pipeline into two newly created companies funded by venture fund Medicxi.

EMA’s human medicines committee (CHMP) recommended six medicines for approval at its January 2019 meeting.