DUBLIN – Gene therapy firm Freeline Therapeutics Ltd. secured the first $40 million tranche of an $80 million series C round from its founding investor and principal shareholder Syncona plc to generate further data from its two clinical-stage programs, in hemophilia B and Fabry disease, to fund expansion of its team and to continue the ongoing buildout of its manufacturing operations in Munich.
DUBLIN – Truffle Capital closed off its fifth Biomedtech fund with a €250 million (US$279 million) raise, which it will deploy in about a dozen companies located mainly in France. The fund took a little longer to close than originally planned but it is significantly larger than it had originally intended. “Our initial objective was €200 million,” Truffle Capital CEO and co-founder Philippe Pouletty told BioWorld MedTech.
DUBLIN – Truffle Capital closed off its fifth Biomedtech fund with a €250 million (US$279 million) raise, which it will deploy in about a dozen companies located mainly in France. The fund took a little longer to close than originally planned but it is significantly larger than it had originally intended. “Our initial objective was €200 million,” Truffle Capital CEO and co-founder Philippe Pouletty told BioWorld.
BEIJING – Gene therapy startup Hui-Gene Therapeutics Ltd. Co., of Shanghai, said it secured more than ¥100 million (US$14 million) in a series A financing round to develop a safer gene therapy to treat genetic diseases caused by single-base mutations.
HONG KONG - With a corporate valuation of $1.04 billion, the South Korean biosimilar company Aprogen Inc. has become the country’s first biotech “unicorn,” according to U.S. market research firm CB Insights. Korea now ranks fifth, tied with Germany, in terms of the number of unicorns, with total of 11 unicorns, a term used to describe private ventures with $1 billion-plus valuations. The U.S has a total of 210 unicorns, followed by China with 102, the U.K. with 22 and India with 18.