European specialist investment firm Gilde Healthcare has closed its €250m fund for later stage and growth capital in medtech, digital health and therapeutics. The oversubscribed fund will invest in both Europe and North America.

Exceptional inventors from all over Europe have been honoured with the European Inventor Award 2016. With the award, the European Patent Office recognises the achievements of inventors from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Finding a treatment for depression that is well-tolerated and effective is difficult and time-consuming. UK scientists have now developed a blood test to predict whether common antidepressants will work in a patient.

Funded with €9m by the French government, biomaterial player Global Bioenergies is getting closer to its goal to build the first bio-isobutene plant. IBN-One, sugar beet producer Cristal Union and cosmetics giant L’Oreal are also on board.

A few months ago, the EMA introduced its new accelerated access scheme, PRIME. Now, the agency has published the first few therapies that will use the chance to speed their breakthrough meds through the approval process.

French Dx play BioMérieux has acquired German Hyglos. The leader in industrial microbiological control paid around €24m for the German company and its innovative endotoxin detection method.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) means to increase first-in-man trial safety. Following the death of a volunteer in a Phase I trial earlier this year, the European Medicines Agency has started a review of the guidelines for first-in-man studies.

The Finnish Technology Academy has awarded US-American innovator Frances Arnold the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize, worth €1m. Arnold is a pioneer in the field of directed evolution.

BigDNA relaunches as Iceni Pharmaceuticals with the aim to develop repurposed and reformulated cancer therapies. First order of business: repurpose Merck Serono’s cilengitide as a multiple myeloma treatment.

One of the pioneering companies developing pharmaceuticals and diagnostics based on the gut microbiome, Enterome Bioscience, has raised €14.5m in a Series C financing round. Among the investors were Seventure and Lundbeckfond as well as Nestlé.