Antibody drug conjugate expert ADC Therapeutics SA has filed a Registration Statement for an Initial Public Offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Glucoma transplant specialist iStar Medical SA has closed a Series C finanincing round led by LSP and Gimv.

Avillion LLP, a drug development company focused on the co-development and financing of pharmaceutical candidates, has announced the appointment of Dr Anders Gersel Pedersen as a Non-Executive Director of Bond 2 Development 2 GP, the General Partner of Bond Avillion 2, the Avillion entity that enters into the co-development agreements with pharma partners.

Dutch gene therapy company UniQure has launched a US$200m stock offering on Nasdaq.

Polpharma Biologics SA has partnered up with Novartis subsidiary Sandoz AG to market a natalizumab biosimilar. As part of the global commercialization agreement, Polpharma Biologics will be responsible for the development, manufacturing and supply of the collaboration biosimilar, which is currently in Phase III clinical development for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).

German pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim said the phase II trial for candidate drug BI456906 is expected to be initiated in late 2019 triggering a €20m milestone payment to Zealand Pharma A/S.

Results presented at European Society of  Cardiology Congress 2019 demonstrate a new disease mechanism predicting acute organ dysfunction in heart failure patients.

A US-EU research team has found that a class of compounds that promote tumour cell death can also limit autoimmunity.

BioEcho develops single-spin and 96-well kits for the isolation of DNA from different starting materials. Their proprietary EchoLUTION single-step technology avoids the use of inhibitory process reagents while using dedicated efficient lysis reagents for e.g. different plant tissues. In contrast to common bind-wash-elute procedures, the process does not require washing steps. The inhibitor-free DNA enables lowered time-to-result in enzyme-dependent genomic analyses such as PCR or NGS.

Celgene will pay $75m upfront to get an option on three cancer programmes developed by Immatics Biotechnologies.