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Life Sciences and Industry Magazine Summer Edition 2020 | Volume 19 | 20 € ISSN 2364-2351 | A 60711 | The EU strikes back COVID-19 Antimicrobials The pharma industry commits to launch a €1bn VC fund for AMR Focus Corona Who will provide the solutions for the pandemics of the future? Interview Pistoia Alliance data manager Ian Harrow on making life science data FAIR for the Age of AI. Artificial Intelligence How progress in AI and biology is transforming how we live FREE EXCERPT

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Page 1: ISSN 2364-2351 | A 60711 | Interview · ing cell culture conditions. There is no need to prepare. Just be ready. Complete LCMS solution for cell culture analysis combining the C2MAP-2000

Life Sciences and Industry Magazine

Summer Edition 2020 | Volume 19 | 20 €

ISSN 2364-2351 | A 60711 |

The EU

strikes back

COVID-19

AntimicrobialsThe pharma industry commits to launch a €1bn VC fund for AMR

Focus CoronaWho will provide the solutions for the pandemics of the future?

InterviewPistoia Alliance data manager Ian Harrow on making life science data FAIR for the Age of AI.

Artificial IntelligenceHow progress in AI and biology is transforming how we live

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Page 2: ISSN 2364-2351 | A 60711 | Interview · ing cell culture conditions. There is no need to prepare. Just be ready. Complete LCMS solution for cell culture analysis combining the C2MAP-2000

Don t prepare. Just be ready.C2MAP-2000 – 1 method, 17 mins, 95 media components

The C2MAP-2000 automates all steps from pre-treatment to measurement without any human intervention. It simplifies the workflow for optimiz-ing cell culture conditions. There is no need to prepare. Just be ready. Complete LCMS solution for cell culture analysis combining the C2MAP-2000 pretreatment module with ultra-fast LCMS-8060 Highly efficient through cutting culture media analysis time by 80 percent

Monitoring of up to 95 components including amino acids, metabolites, sugars, vitamins and organic acids Changes at a glance with C2MAP-TRENDS viewer software visualizing temporal changes of components

C2MAP-2000 – Complete LCMS solution www.shimadzu.eu/c2map

Shimadzu_Euro-Biotech_0320.qxp_210x275 14.02.20 12:05 Seite 1

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3European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020 IntroPi

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SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will not cure COVID-19

As the race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine increases, many people ne-glect the simple fact that, even if it is found and shown to be safe, it will not cure patients suffering from COVID-19. Once the virus has invaded the respiratory system of a patient, a vaccination is of little help. Moreover, vaccine development is often a very long process, and the production needs to supply doses for several billion people worldwide. Realistically, it will take many years, and it will cost bil-lions of dollars. Until we have vaccinated the world and eradicat-ed the virus, hundreds of thousands of people will likely die from COVID-19. That is why we need antiviral drugs in addition to vac-cines. And, we need them quickly to treat severe COVID-19 cases and save lives today.

The development of novel drugs can take more than ten years from research to market. On short notice, the pharma industry tried to repurpose existing drugs, but many of them showed no significant benefits so far, with some even worsening the pa-tient’s condition. Some recent trials demonstrated moderate progress in ameliorating inflammation symptoms in later stages, or interfering with the virus replication to improve the prognosis for patients, but none have yet the ability to stop the virus from infecting host cells. The high financial risk of new drug develop-ment and the uncertainty of the COVID-19 “market” led many players to postpone decisions. However, there is another hope in the battle against COVID-19. When our immune system re-sponds to the infection, it generates a valuable resource for an antiviral drug – our own antibodies that neutralise the virus. Se-rum from convalescent donors achieved some positive effects, but this is a quite limited and undefined resource. The better al-ternative would be a recombinant, fully human, virus-neutralis-ing antibody. This type of molecule could even reach the clinics much quicker than other drug types. Fully human antibodies are typically safe and well-tolerated. Moreover, development path-

ways for antibody drugs are well established, and, significantly, a vast large-scale anti-body manufacturing infrastructure is available. Unlike vaccines, neutralising antibodies act immediately without delay and are hoped to cure COVID-19 in later stages, as well. Due to the long halftime, antibodies can be even used as a “passive vaccine”, to pro-tect risk groups and health care workers for a few weeks.

So, what is the challenge? Normally, with the neutralising antibody candidate in hand, one needs two to three years to start the first clinical trials in humans. Luckily, due to the pandemics’ pressure, it seems that all institutions are doing their best to significant-ly shorten this process. Thanks to a concerted effort, some antibody development pro-grammes are already on their way, and they have been conceived and approved to take only a few months. For the benefit of the patients that will still populate our intensive care units for years to come, it is important to keep these programmes up and running and financially-supported, even if the first vaccine studies appear promising. L

Dr Thomas schirrmann is the CEO of YUMAB GmbH and CORAt therapeutics GmbH in Braun schweig, Germany. He is a biochemist by training and com-pleted his PhD in immunology. He worked as a scientist and re-search group leader for 20 years and published more than 70 scientific articles in the fields of immunology, immunotherapy, and antibody technologies. In 2012/13, he founded YUMAB, which is dedicated to antibody drug devel-opment. In May 2020, YUMAB spun out CORAt therapeutics to bring a fast-track COVID-19 anti-body program to clinical trials.

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4 European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020ContEntS

InsIght EuropE

6 European Greens fight over ‘new genetic engineering’ – and a revision of the EU’s GMO

law

8 Research project investigates traceability and market control of unintended spread from genome- edited agricultural products; Big Pharma flexes its muscles.

9 European Commission pledges an additional €4.9bn to fight COVID-19

10 Antimicrobial resistance is back on the global agenda: Industry launches €1bn Venture Capital fund

14 Industrial Biotechnology – achieving a sustainable green recovery

Economy

34 Interview: Federico Pollano, Senior Vice President of Global Business Development, Rentschler Biopharma SE

36 IP Flash

37 Market commentary

38 Euro Biotech Stocks

41 Update on clinical trials

44 EMA News

COVID-19 therapies: The EU strikes back

covEr story

More than six months after a novel coro-navirus in China first hit headlines, we’re staggering under the scope of the pan-demic. How much energy and how many resources should we be pumping into vac-cines, mass diagnostic testing or new ther-apeutics? Europe is making plans to bring production of some medicines back from Asia. Just one step in a strategy that could prove perfect or pointless, in a world that is continuing to batten down the hatches. We look at some of the many measures that could make a difference.

IMPRINT European Biotechnology (ISSN 2364-2351) is published quarterly by: BIOCOM AG, Lützowstr. 33–36, D-10785 Berlin, Germany, Tel.: +49-30-264921-0, Fax: +49-30-264921-11, Email: [email protected], Internet: www.european-biotechnology.com; Publisher: Andreas Mietzsch; Editorial Team: Thomas Gabrielczyk (Editor in Chief), Derrick Williams (Co-editor), Sandra Wirsching, Uta Mommert; Advertising: Oliver Schnell, +49-30-2649-2145, Christian Böhm, +49-30-2649-2149, Andreas Macht, +49-30-2649-2154; Distribution: Lukas Bannert, +49-30-2649-2148; Graphic Design: Michaela Reblin; Production editor: Benjamin Röbig; Printed at: Königsdruck, Berlin; European Biotechnology Life Sciences & Industry Magazine is only regularly available through subscription at BIOCOM AG. Annual subscription BIOCOM CARD Europe: €80 for private individuals (students €40) incl. VAT, €120 plus VAT for corporates. Prices includes postage & packaging. Ordered subscriptions can be cancelled within two weeks directly at BIOCOM AG. The subscription is initially valid for one year. Subscriptions will be renewed automatically for one more year, respectively, unless they are cancelled at least six weeks before the date of expiry. Failures of delivery, which BIOCOM AG is not responsible for, do not entitle the subscriber to delivery or reimbursement of pre-paid fees. Seat of court is Berlin, Germany. As regards contents: individually named articles are published within the sole responsibility of their respective authors. All material published is protected by copyright. no article or part thereof may be reproduced in any way or processed, copied and proliferated by electronic means without the prior written consent of the publisher. Cover Photo: sdecoret/stock.adobe.com; ® BIOCOM is a registered trademark of BIOCOM AG, Berlin, Germany.

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rEgIonal nEws

64 northern Europe: Sweden, Denmark, norway and

Finland

66 Southern Europe: Italy, Spain and Greece 68 Central Europe: Germany, Switzerland and Austria

70 Western Europe: France, Belgium, the netherlands and the UK

72 Eastern Europe: Poland, Czech Republic and Estonia

scIEncE & tEchnology 58 Interview: AI in cancer

Hartmut Juhl, CEO, Indivumed Group

62 Vital expertise in oncolytic virus production

82 Researchers begin clinical testing on a universal vaccine to rejuve-nate immune systems in the elderly

sErvIcE 49 Biopeople 77 News from the SBA 78 new Products 80 Events 81 Company index 82 Encore

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5European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020 ContEntS

EdItorIal

Positive perception Will the COVID-19 crisis prove to be a turning point for the acceptance of biotech in Europe? Until recently, a majority of EU citizens only had nega-tive associations with biotechnology – GMOs are a case in point (see p. 6). The novel coronavirus, however, is changing this mass perception dra-matically (see p. 26). With the world desperate to put lockdowns behind as quickly as possible, biotech fields are the only ones to offer hope through possible solutions – whether in diag-nostics, therapies or vaccines (see COVID-19 Special pp. 16–35).

And when biotech is no longer viewed as a threat, its platform tech-nologies will bear economic fruit more quickly, and much more of it. At least, that's according to a new McKinsey study entitled "The Bio Revolution" (see p. 50). It predicts biotech could have €10 trillion in growth potential by 2040 – but only if it gains wider acceptance. Only then will sustaina-ble methods in areas such as agricul-ture, AI-supported diagnostics and en-zyme synthesis prevail, the study says.With biotech’s help, will politicians be able to seize this opportunity to make Europe the most sustainable place on the planet? Or will governments prior-itise preserving vested interests – a choice that will be paid for by our children’s children? We’ll only know when the pandemic has passed. But until then, there's plenty we can per-sonally do to keep the vision alive.

thomas Gabrielczyk

Editor-in-Chief

data managEmEnt

Collecting FAIR dataA survey conducted by the Pistoia Al-liance found that AI in the life scienc-es is still being held back by data issues and skills shortages. We spoke with Ian Harrow, a Consultant at the Alliance, about how to improve data manage-ment in the field with help from a new toolkit that makes data Findable, Ac-cessible, Inter operable and Reusable – in brief: FAIR.

artIFIcIal IntEllIgEncE

Medicine – a new ageSelf-learning algorithms are growing com-mon not only in oncology, and a flood of new publications suggests they already outperform trained experts in many areas of diagnosis. Pharma giants have cracked open the door to machines choosing drug candidates. AI is set to have a huge im-pact in the coming years on both health systems and patients.

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COVID-19 23 Targeting coronaviruses 24 A rapid test for pandemics26 Interview: Raimund Gabriel, CEO and Founder, MC Services Munich, Germany28 The end of partnering events as we know them29 Antiviral drugs for pandemic preparedness30 Sourcing reference products 32 Defining the bioprocess early is key to quality control

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16 European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020AI

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Digitally colored scanning electron micrograph of apoptotic cells (burgundy) heavily infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (green), isolated from a patient sample. Image captured at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland (US).

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17European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020 COVID-19Pi

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COVID-19 therapy – the EU strikes backCorona Crisis No one can yet predict with any certainty what strategies will prove most effective

against COVID-19. Along with upping production capacities for vaccines and diagnostics, European

Union leaders are discussing plans to expand production of the first effective therapeutics. Under

the German EU presidency, some production could be brought back from Asia.

For Andrea Ammon, Director of the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC), the decline in the number of infections with the new

SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in most Europe-an countries is only a stage, not a victo-ry. “I don’t want to draw a doomsday pic-ture, but I think we have to be realistic. The virus seems to be very well adapted to humans. Now is not the time to com-pletely relax,” she said – just before a second wave of infection hit Israel.

Three-pronged strategy

Experts like former FDA head Scott Gott-lieb are predicting that a second wave could descend on Europe and the US this autumn, roughly two years before the Eu-ropean Medicines Agency (EMA) esti-mates a protective vaccine will be avail-able for the broader population. While heavily funded vaccine coalitions have advanced the clinical development of potential jabs, and are busy ramping up capacities for potential mass production (see p. 18), there are a lot of open ques-tions. For example, it’s unclear whether any of the current vaccine candidates in clinical testing will be able to prevent vi-rus entry where it’s needed – at the mu-cous membranes in the upper respirato-ry tract.

According to HIV pioneer and Aicuris GmbH founder Helga Rübsamen-Schaeff “there’s no guarantee” that there will even

be a COVID-19 vaccine, and no real idea how long development could take. Then there’s the question of how long it will protect recipients.

At a virtual expert briefing of the Ger-man biotech industry association BIO Deutsch land, she suggested establishing a monitoring system by September that includes making diagnostics available in

every doctor’s practice in the country, in order to to quickly identify infected peo-ple who have to be quarantined. She also recommended making therapies availa-ble that demonstrably alleviate the course of the two disease phases of COVID-19 – viremia and host immune response.

“Realistically, vaccine development will take many years, and will cost bil-lions of dollars,” says Thomas Schirr-mann. The CEO of antibody developer Yumab and CORAT Therapeutics GmbH told EuropEan BiotEchnology that “un-til we have vaccinated the world and eradicated the virus, hundreds of thou-sands of people will likely die from COVID-19. That’s why we need antiviral drugs in addition to vaccines.”

Results from the UK’s RECOVERY tri-al demonstrate that approved drugs like dexa methasone could provide a quick lifeline. The cheap anti-rheumatic cortico-steroid (US$15/10-day course of treat-ment) saved the life of one in eight ven-tilated COVID-19 patients compared to the standard-of-care. On the other hand, the antiviral HIV treatment lopinavir-ritonavir and malaria medicine hydroxy-chloroquine failed. The first clinical results from IL-6 blockers like Sanofi-Regeneron’s saralimumab or Roche’s tocilizumab – which might help control late-stage cy-tokine storms – showed mixed results […]

›› Read the full story in the printed issue.

DR. PeteR LLeweLLyN-DAVIS CeO, Apeiron Biologics AG, Vienna, Austria

? Why is APN01 more specific for the treatment of COVID-19 than other therapies?

!APN01 is specific to treat Covid -19. It’s not a repurposed drug.

SARS and SARS-Cov-2 use the same receptor to enter cells. An imitator of the ACE2 molecule, APN01 binds specifically to the virus, inhibits infec-tion, and protects the lung.”

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50 European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020AI

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Patient data grows more readable for machines by the day. Has the Biohacking Era dawned with the advent of Big Medicine? There’s no longer a way to get around machine analysis of personal medical information, because it has the potential to significantly improve diagnosis, therapy and healthcare decisions. Under the FAIR guidelines, the biopharma industry is taking an approach to data acessibility in AI-driven research that seeks to strike a balance with protecting patient data.

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51European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020 AIPi

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My robot doctor – a new age in medicineDeep learning The machines take over – it’s the backdrop for countless science fiction novels.

Will it happen first in medicine? Self-learning algorithms are already helping oncologists analyse Big Data,

and a flood of new publications suggest they already outperform trained experts in image-, sequencing-

and clinical data-based diagnosis. Pharma giants have cracked open the door to machines choosing drug

candidates, and are using them to analyse deficient signaling pathways that lead to cancer and other

health threats. So what impact will AI have on health systems – and patients?

In tandem with accelerating develop-ments in computing, data processing, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytics, advances in the biological

sciences are fueling a new wave of inno-vation that could have a significant im-pact in a wide range of sectors – from healthcare and agriculture to consum-er goods and energy. That’s the outlook that sets the tone for the new McKinsey Global Institute report “The Bio Revolu-tion”. According to senior partner Mat-thias Evers and his co-authors, trans-formative “new methodologies, including automation, machine learning, and pro-liferating biological data are enhancing discovery, throughput and productivi-ty in R&D.” Self-learning algorithms that allow both automatic interpretation and comparison of next-generation sequenc-ing (NGS) as well as diagnostic imaging data – and which additionally integrate the current knowledge on coronaviruses – are not just being used to find drugs and targets that could help arrest the cur-rent COVID-19 pandemic (see interview pp. 60-61). They also have the potential to improve productivity across the entire diagnostic and therapeutic pipeline.

And some applications go far beyond that. According to the report, in human health alone, at least 45% of the global disease burden could be addressed if ex-isting scientific data were findable, acces-

sible, interoperational and reusable (FAIR) by machines, particularly in an automat-ed manner. Depending on how quick-ly the technologies are adopted, the au-thors estimate economic potential among all biologic applications in the next 10 to

20 years of US$2tn-$4tn annually (see Fig. 1, p. 52).

Stripping disease to its basics

Just as with human intelligence, there’s no single accepted definition for AI. In simple terms, however, it includes all at-tempts to transfer human learning and thinking to a computer system so it can solve problems independently. Normal, rule-based systems written by program-mers are not AI, because they are for ex-ample unable to recognise an image of the same person in fog, rain, backlight, with a beard or clean-shaven, etc. AI al-gorithms, on the other hand, can learn to distinguish people from existing im-ages or data. And they can do the same for tumours or tissues. By applying the rules they learn to billions of new im-ages, they can recognise patterns in Big Data sets. The same applies to other an-alytical data from the life sciences lab-oratory. The combination of machine-readable Big Data and its analysis via AI therefore offers hitherto unimaginable possibilities for the life sciences. In the analysis of both structured and unstruc-tured data, self-learning algorithms are far superior to rule-based software […]

›› Read the full story in the printed issue.

PRoF. DR. HARTMUT JUHl Founder and CEo Indivumed Group, Hamburg, Germany

?How important do you think self-learning algorithms will be

to cancer diagnosis in the future?

!Deciphering the biological com-plexity of cancer is the future of

precision oncology. AI-based algo-rithms are essential for achieving this goal, because they enable high-ly efficient drug development and patient diagnostics for personalised medicine.

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70 European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020WESTERN EUROPE

AM-Pharma raises €116m for Phase III© freshidea - Fotolia.de17.07.2019 by um

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Beam me up COVID-19 After the chimpanzee

adenoviral COVID-19 vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – developed at the Universi-ty of Oxford by Sarah Gilbert and An-drew Pollard and produced by Halix BV – successfully passed Phase I safety test-ing, AstraZeneca plc acquired the world-wide marketing rights. In Phase II/III tri-als, which started enrolment of up to 10,260 volunteers at the end of May, the immunogenicity and in vitro virus neu-tralisation capability of the jab, renamed AZD-1222, and the MenACWY ‘control’ vaccine is now to be compared.

In June, Lyon-based vaccine and gene therapy vector CDMO Novasep SA an-nounced that it will contribute to the production for up to 300 million doses of AZ1222 ordered by the Inclusive Al-liance for Vaccines (IAV), consisting of France, Germany, Italy and the Nether-lands. But the Alliance will also make AZD-1222 available for other countries in Europe starting from autumn.

In its Seneffe (Belgium) facilities, the CDMO will produce the active sub-stance of the vaccine, while Emergent Bio solution Inc will be AstraZeneca’s manufacturing partner in the US. There, AZ-1222 was selected for a €1.2bn fund-ing within US President Donald Trump’s COVID vaccine accelerator “Opera-tion Warp Speed” that is aimed to pro-vide 400 million doses until September 2020. Through an EU emergency fund of €2.3bn, the European Commission has the mandate to purchase up to six differ-ent COVID-19 vaccines for all member states. L

Evox Therapeutics has isolated and analysed exosomes targeting different tissues.

Struggling for market sharesOnCOLOgy Dutch formulation specialist SeraNovo BV has extended the exist-ing licence contract with US kinase blocker expert Carna Biosciences, Inc. Under a new contract, the companies will co-develop an oral GRAS excipient-based formu-lation to increase the oral bioavailability of a preclinical pipeline product of Carna BioSciences. L

Citizens alone at homelevels – could provide highly valuable in-formation to address critical public health questions, such as when to relax stay-at-home orders or school closures.

In theory, antibody tests can examine whether or not a person has ever been exposed to a certain virus. However, what SARS-CoV-2 antibody test results mean for protection and immunity is still poor-ly understood. Thus, as tools to issue “im-mune passports” that certify an individ-ual’s immunity, current serological tests were insufficient and even harmful, the authors write; the tests would, in fact, need near-perfect specificity to provide a reliable gauge of immune protection. By contrast, as tools to ascertain population-level epidemiological trends, and in con-junction with PCR testing, serological sur-veys could help officials estimate the risk of future waves of disease, measure the impact of interventions, and may provide a less biased picture of infection fatality rate than PCR testing of viral RNA. L

AnTIbODy TEsTIng An inter-national research consortium has found initial evidence that SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests are only useful for population-based analyses. This is no good message for poli-cymakers willing to relax social distancing measures based on immunity passports or antibody titers against the spike- and nucle-ocapsid proteins of SARS-CoV-2: In Science immunology, Juliet Bryant from Fondation Mérieux in Lyon, France, and colleagues highlight the potential power of popula-tion-level serological, or antibody testing to provide snapshots of infection history and immunity in populations as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses. In contrast, they em-phasise the risks of using current serologi-cal tests to assess individual immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

While the World Health Organization WHO recommends restricting such an-tibody testing to research use only, sci-entists here argue that these tests – even with moderate sensitivity and specificity

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AM-Pharma raises €116m for Phase III© freshidea - Fotolia.de17.07.2019 by um

71European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020 WESTERN EUROPE

NEWSBone growth

Belgian Bone Therapeutics SA has secured €11m to foster the de-velopment of its late-stage pipeline candidates. The company said it will use the proceeds to advance two key assets of its allogeneic cell ther-apy platform, ALLOB and JTA-004, which have both completed Phase IIa tests. The financing operation consists of a €4.75m bridge loan, €1.26m in equity private placement by existing shareholders and, on an as-needed basis, a €4.99m private placement of convertible bonds. Subject to the completion of the cur-rent financing operation, supporting the company’s further development and strengthen its balance sheet, Bone Therapeutics expects to have a runway into Q1/2021.

Adding compounds

For years, French Carbios SAS has worked to set up a process that ef-fectively depolymerises polyethylen-terephtalate (PET) waste, which makes one-fifth of the 359 million tons of mostly non-degradable plas-tics produced annually. In April, de-tails of the process were published. While mechanical properties are lost during the physico-mechani-cal approaches applied today to de-grade PET, Carbios’ optimised bac-terial hydrolase/depolymerase leads to over 90% of PET recovery by a process that lasts 10 hours and is to be scaled up by 2021. The compa-ny’s process provides recycled PET that exhibits the same properties as petrochemical PET and can be pro-duced from enzymatically depolym-erized PET waste, thereby contribut-ing towards the concept of a circular PET economy.

New vesicular vehicle

fied yet, neurological drug targets. Evox Therapeutics will functionalise exosomes in order to achieve brain/CNS targeting, drug loading and analytics and some in vitro assay development, as well as ma-terial supply for initial in vivo studies. Lil-ly will have the right to opt in after pre-clinical proof of concept and will receive the exclusive right to commercialise all li-cenced drug candidates. Evox will receive tiered royalties on net sales if a product makes it to the market. L

Drug DELIVEry Evox Therapeu-tics Ltd has licenced its exosome-based RNAi/antisense RNA delivery technol-ogy to Eli Lilly to target selected brain/CNS disorders. Lilly paid US$20m up-front and US$10m per convertible bond. Additionally, Evox Therapeutics is eliglib-le to receive up to US$1.2bn in develop-ment, regulatory and commercial mile-stone payments. Under the contract, Eli Lilly will provide antisense oligonucle-otides directed against five, not speci-

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Money for CBD developersversified portfolio of companies with dis-ruptive technology and strong barriers to entry. The team is supported by a highly experienced senior advisory board that provides critical expertise and expands its network. Medical grade cannabinoid-based products are already approved and used in Europe to treat conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and chron-ic pain. Now the science and the medi-cal community are driving opportunities in human as well as animal health and wellness. The fund will invest in the en-tire value chain as well as look to valor-ise hemp and cannabis biomass for new sustainable material applications. A first investment has been made in Denmark’s Octarine Bio. L

FInAnCE In June Óskare Capital SAS launched the first European fund partic-ularly dedicated to EU companies in the medical cannabinoid industry: Óskare Fund I targets next-generation canna- binoid therapies and related industry in-frastructure, leveraging the expertise and track record of the founding team in medicine, engineering, chemistry, ven-ture capital, and intellectual property.“I am convinced that Europe has the opti-mal regulatory and research environment to build the future key players in the glo-bal medical cannabinoid industry,” said Bruce Linton, co-founder and non-exec-utive Chairman of Óskare Capital SAS and former CEO and founder at Cano-py Growth. The fund will invest in a di-

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80 European Biotechnology | Summer Edition | Vol. 19 | 2020Company IndEx

AabbVie Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 64accord Healthcare S.L.U. (ES) . . . . . . . . . 44adaptive Biotechnologies (USa) . . . . . . . . 56aI VIVo (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54aiCuris GmbH & Co KG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . 17amazon (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15apeiron Biologics aG (aT) . . . . . . . . . 17, 23aptamer Group Ltd (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20arya Sciences acquisitions(USa) . . . . . . . 69astraZeneca aB (SE/UK) . . . . . . 3, 18, 20, 41atriva Therapeutics GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . 29austria Economic Service Company . . . . . 23avexis EU Ltd. (IRL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

BBaSF (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 15Bavarian nordic (dK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Bayer aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 56, 65Bioascent discovery Ltd (UK) . . . . . . . . . . 49BIoCom aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40BioFIT & medFIT 2020 (dE) . . . . . . . . 73, 81Biognosys aG (CH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49BionTech SE (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 37, 69BioVersys aG (CH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Boehmert & Boehmert (dE) . . . . . . . . 36, 63Boehringer Ingelheim (dE) . . . . . . . . . 10, 13Bone Therapeutics (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Bosch Healthcare (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

CCalliditas Therapeutics aB (SE) . . . . . . . . . 65Canopy Growth (Cdn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Carbios SaS (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 71Carna Biosciences Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . 70Cassiopea Spa (IT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Celgene Europe BV (nL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44Centogene aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22CoRaT Therapeutics GmbH (dE) . . . . . 3, 17Cosmo pharmaceuticals (IT) . . . . . . . . 66, 69Covestro deutschland aG . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Cowen Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37CSL Behring GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65CureVac aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Ddeep Lens Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53deinove Sa (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49dGpharmed (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 59,81EEli Lilly (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 71Emergent Biosolutions (USa) . . . . . . . . . . 41Eppendorf Bioprocess Center Eur. (dE) . . . . 55EURoImmUn aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33EuropaBio (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cp3European Biotechnology network (B) . . . . 61Evox Therapeutics Ltd (UK) . . . . . . . . . 49, 71

F

faCellitate (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Faron pharmaceuticals oy (FIn) . . . . . . . . 65

FGK Clinical Research GmbH (dE) . . . . . . 43

Fördergesellschaft IZB (dE) . . . . . . . . . 45–48

Fosun pharma (Cn). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Fraport GmbH (dE). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

G

Galapagos nV (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

GBa Group pharma (dE) . . . . . . . . . . 30, 35

GC pharma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

GE Healthcare Ltd. (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Genmab a/S (dK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 64

Gilead Sciences Internation (USa) . . . . . . 75

GlaxoSmithKline (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Gna Biosolutions (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . 21, 24

Grifols Sa (ES) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

H

Halix B.V. (nL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41, 70

I

Immatics Biotechnologies aG (dE) . . . . . . 69

Immunovative Therapies Ltd (IL) . . . . . 22, 74

Indivumed GmbH (dE) . . . . . . 51, 53, 57, 58

Innophore GmbH (aT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Inovio pharmaceuticals Inc. (USa) . . . . . . 18

Insilico medicine (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Integumen Ltd (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Ipsen pharmaceuticals S.a. (F) . . . . . . . . . 49

Izana Bioscience (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

J

Janssen-Cilag International nV (B) . . . . . . 44

Jazz pharmaceuticals plc (IRL) . . . . . . . . . 66

L

Lufthansa aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

LuinaBio (aUS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

M

mac Brooks Exhibitions Ltd. (UK) . . . . . . . 81

maaT pharma (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

mC Services aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 31

merck & Co. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

merck KGaa (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 41, 43

merck millipore Sigma (USa) . . . . . . . . . . 19

mirror Biologics Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

mLm medical Labs GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . 67

modern Biosciences plc (UK) . . . . . . . . . . 18

mSd Sharp & dohme (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . 10

mylan IRE Healthcare Ltd. (IRL) . . . . . . . . 44

myR GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Nnanome.ai (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54nicox S.a. (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43nova BIomedical GmbH (CH/d) . . . . . 9, 79novartis Europharm Ltd. (UK) . . . . . . . . . . 44novasep Sa (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70novavax Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18novo Holdings (dK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10novo nordisk a/S (dK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Ooctarine Bio (dK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71oncoradiomics BV (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56orphan Biovitrum aB (SE) . . . . . . . . . . . . 65oskare Capital SaS (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Ppaion aG (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69pepperprint GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Pfizer (USA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 18, 69pharmamar S.a. (ES) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66pivotal S.L. (ES) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41polpharma Biologics S.a. (pL) . . . . . . . . Gp4poxel Sa (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Q/RQuest diagnostics Inc. (USa) . . . . . . . . . . 20Randox Life Sciences (UK) . . . . . . . . . . . . 22RauCon GmbH & Co. KG (dE) . . . . . 32, 75Rentschler Biopharma (dE) . . . . . . 11, 34, 64Roche (CH) . . . . 10, 17, 20, 42, 53, 56, 59, 61 Ryvu Therapeutics Sa (pL) . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

S/TSanofi-Aventis Group (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44Seranovo B.V. (nL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70SGS Belgium nV (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Shimadzu (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cp2Shire plc (IRL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Sinovac Biotech (Cn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Sobi aB (SE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Som Biotech Spa (ES) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Staidson Biopharmaceuticals (Cn) . . . . . . 41The Hyve (nL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 61

U/VUCB Sa (B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Valneva SE (F) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Vaxxim aG (CH/dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Vetter pharma International (dE) . . . . . . . . 41Vibalogics GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 62Vienna Business agency (aT) . . . . . . . . . . 23

Y/Zyumab GmbH (dE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 17Zelluna Immunotherapies aS (no) . . . . . . 64

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