Simris Group is making amanitin-based ADCs the center of its strategy under former Heidelberg Pharma CEO Andreas Pahl — less than two months after hiring the executive who helped build Heidelberg Pharma’s own amanitin platform.
EthrisThe European Investment Bank (EIB) is providing German Ethris with €30 million to advance clinical development of its mRNA-based antiviral candidate ETH47. The Munich-based RNA specialist has been working on the approach for several years. The EIB financing also highlights a persistent challenge in pandemic preparedness: broad-spectrum antivirals may have substantial societal value, but their commercial market is difficult to predict.
CDMO company Northway Biotech has opened a €61 million cell therapy and personalized medicine center in Vilnius that is being qualified for GMP manufacturing, and the company says it expects a manufacturing authorization from Lithuania’s State Medicines Control Agency within six months.
The Barcelona-based biotech will use the financing to complete a 30-patient Phase 2a study of its lead candidate CTH120, with the first efficacy data expected in mid-2027.
Danish biotech Teitur Trophics completed its phase 1 study and said its experimental Parkinson’s disease treatment TT-P34 was safe and reached the central nervous system, supporting plans to move the peptide into phase 2 testing in 2027.
Dutch biotech Leyden Labs has reported positive Phase 1 results for intranasal RIG-101 and disclosed that it acquired the drug’s developer, RIGImmune, earlier this year.
Next-gen, effective payloads – from AI-designed small molecules to RNA-based therapeutics and gene therapies – have revolutionized medicine. Yet, the main hurdle remains targeted delivery: avoiding immune reactions (seen with many viral vectors) or undesired organ accumulation (evidenced with LNPs in the liver). Scientists are now harnessing a technology that could overcome these hurdles by using vesicles that cells naturally produce: exosomes.
Switzerland-based Pharvaris’ once-daily oral deucrictibant XR reduced hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks by 83% versus placebo in a pivotal Phase 3 trial, putting the experimental prophylactic into roughly the same efficacy range as several leading injected treatments.
Novartis has suffered another pipeline setback after del-desiran, an antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate acquired with Avidity Biosciences, failed to significantly improve hand function over placebo in the Phase 3 HARBOR study in myotonic dystrophy type 1.
North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a state located in the North-West of Germany, is investing €200 million to connect university hospitals in Aachen, Bochum, Bonn, Düsseldorf, Essen, Cologne and Münster, as well as the Technical University Dortmund in an AI network for cancer medicine.