In mid-October, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the Agence Française de Developpement launched a five-year €2bn initiative called "Clean Oceans", which is dedicated to sustainable solutions set to reduce the amount of 8 million tons of plastic that are littered into the oceans every year. About 90% of the plastic waste and the resulting microplastic particles come from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. © KfW

The European Parliament has approved measures that could lead to a ban of the top 10 single use plastic products that contribute to marine littering by 2021.
    

© Innate Pharma SA

AstraZeneca plc has extended its immunoncology pipeline by an extension of its partnership with French Innate Pharma SA.

Intestinal villi. © fololia.com/fololiaxrender

French Enterome SA has added a second licence agreement with Takeda to its deal portfolio, projecting possible payments of US$640m.

The European Medicines Agency delays the EU approval of Nivolumab/Ipilimumab in NSCLC and greenlights four biotherapeutics to be marketed in the EU.

Plantics NV won the EFIB PitchFest. © BIOCOM AG

Industrial biotech innovations, presented in at the 11th EFIB in Toulouse, could become the key enabler set to save our planet if supported appropriately.

© ColiN00B / Pixabay

Oxford Nanopore Technologies has impressed Amgen with its genetic sequencing technology. The US biopharma major has invested £50m in the Oxford-based company.

© Henry Salomé via Wikimedia Commons

In a Series B financing round, INSERM spin-off Acticor Biotech has raised €15.3m from European and Asian investors. The new financing will go towards the launch off the first Phase II clinical trial of its lead candidate ACT017 in acute ischemic stroke. 

Multinational biotherapeutics company HiFiBiO Therapeutics announced that it has taken over early stage biotech H-Immune Therapeutics. With the acquisition of the French Atomic Energy Commission spin-out, HiFiBiO aims to strengthen its strategic focus on targetting differenct T cell subsets and combat cancer. 

© Roche

Roche has announced that in a Phase III trial, its antibody-drug conjugate Kadcyla showed improved invasive disease-free survival in breast cancer patients.

Targovax ASA has reported promising disease-free survival (DFS) data from Tg01 in resected pancreatic cancer.