It might seem unreal but it is unfortunately true: the mean stake taken by British universities in the year of spinning out is 23.8%, which at the end of the process leaves founders with a bare 50-54% ownership in their companies. Despite this, Elasmogen is doing very well and I am sure many will be curious to see where things are in 2 years. Sofinnova and Apollo have entered a long-term partnership and Lord O’Neill’s fund has raised £215 million fund for backing university spin-out deals. RQ Biotechnology and Isomorphic Labs have attracted a panel of starts in biotech pioneers. Feeling a little lost with the TIGIT drama? Worry not. This week’s interesting readings section has one of the best articles I have featured in the section. Tip: John Maranganore. Let’s dive in!

Much is said about lack of IPO fillings in British markets (£24.6 million Q1/2022 vs. £215 million Q1/2021), despite the good numbers for VC investment( £453 million from Dec/2021 to Feb/2022). Now, the real elephant in the room is at the base, not at the top: Universities are holding back biotech spin-outs with disproportionate equity demands. Some figures from the recent Beauhurst report on UK academic spinout trends: the mean stake taken by universities in the year of spinning out is 23.8% (2010-2022). In contrast, founders are left with 54.4% approx. Cambridge takes on average 10% whereas Oxford requests around 25% (normally 20%), although Oxford is the largest spinout producer. Even if Oxford founders managed to spinout without any university involvment at all, University takes 10%. Data from spinoutfyi indicates that the average university equity stake was 25.7% and it has lowered to 20.6 in 2021. A decrease but a very slow one. If we look at University of Leeds, Glasgow and Newcastle, one might actually feel in all rightness that the grass is always greener on the other side: Leeds takes 40-60%, Glasgow around 50%, and Newscastle 60%. Founders, you deserve better. The solution? Read Nathan Benaich (GP at Air Street Capital): “A globally competitive standardised deal offering Technology Transfer Offices a choice of either 1-5 per cent common equity, 1 per cent royalty on net sales, or 1 per cent of the exit value upon M&A or IPO.”

Aberdeen-based Elasmogen has raised £8 million investment round. The round has been participated by BGF, Scottish National Investment Bank, and Scottish Enterprise. Elasmogen core technology soloMERTM taps into naturally found molecules in sharks’ immune systems that act as antibodies. Their lead program is a soloMER drug conjugate targeting ROR1 in solid tumor cancers. Dr Jane Dancer (ex-CBO at F-star, ex-VP at Cellzome and ex-Director of Business Developement at Cambridge Antibody Technology) has been appointed as Non-executive Director. Elasmogen has partnered with Almac Discovery and Intract Pharma to develop certain areas of their in-house pipeline.

Oxford University-spinout Oxford Drug Design (OOD) has raised £2.2 million bridge round from existing investors ACF Investors, o2h Ventures, R42 Group and Jonathan Milner, as well as a number of business angels. OOD is developing their proprietary dual-track AI platform for drug discovery, which they are utilising in the context of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzymes. They focus on unmet therapeutic needs in lung and colorectal cancers.

VisusNano has been awarded £1.39 million Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst grant. The company is developing drug-releasing intraocular lenses for patients undergoing cataract surgery in both human and pet markets. The funding will be used to test safety and efficacy of MEDILens in humans. VisusNano’s £1.5m Series A round is expected to close shortly. The company is backed by Discovery Park Venture and won the Accelerate@Babraham competition in 2018.

University of Edinburgh-spinout OGI Bio has raised £1 million funding to set up a new lab. The round was led by Tricapital. Further investment was raised from Apollo Informal Investment, Sapphire Capital Partners, and Scottish Enterprise. The startup has developed a low cost automation for culturing microbes that reproduces manual flask culturing while allowing for better processing capabilities, data analysis cost reductions. OGI Bio has authorisation to market its product in the UK, rest of Europe and US.

Northern Griston has raised £215 million fund for backing university spin-out deals. Greater Manchester Pension Fund and West Yorkshire Pension Fund are part of the initial fundraising as well as other major institutional investors such M&G Investments, Lansdowne Partners and Andrew Law (personal capacity). The fund is chaired by Lord O’Neill (former Treasury minister and ex-Goldman Sachs) and run by Duncan Johnson (ex-CEO of Caledonia Investments' private capital arm). The firm aims to raise up to £500 million.

Sofinnova Partners and Apollo Global Management entered long-term strategic and financial partnership. Apollo will take a minority equity interest in Sofinnova and commit up to €1 billion to its investment funds. The agreement sets to fuel Sofinnova growth while allowing Apollo to increase its stakes in biotech companies. Currently, Sofinnova Partners has over €2.5 billion under management.

Praetura Ventures has raised £100 million fund. Praetura will be looking to deploy £15 million into 10 to 15 EIS-qualifying deep-tech and life science startups primarily located in the North of England.

Discovery Park has launched £1 million fund Discovery Park Ventures to invest in early-stage startups. It plans to scale up to £25 million in the next three years. The fund has already invested £100,000 in VisusNano and £140,000 in Vitarka Therapeutics.

BBSRC Business and Academia Prosperity Partnership funding opportunity is now available for UK-based companies or those with UK-based research activity. The funding will cover 80% of the full economic cost (100% for skills and talent training costs) in projects of up to 5 years.

RQ Biotechnology has signed exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with AstraZeneca to develop, manufacture and commercialise RQ Bio monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. The agreement will yield payments of up to $157 million plus royalties. In addition RQ Bio has appointed Hugo Fry (former Sanofiexecutive and CCO at Imbria) as CEO, Mike Westby (CSO of Centauri Therapeuticsand former Pfizer R&D Executive) as Scientific Advisor, Paul Kellam (Professor of Virus Genomics at the Imperial and VP or Infectious Diseases and Vaccines at Kymab) as Scientific Advisor, and Jane Osbourn OBE (CSO of Alchemab) as Scientific Advisor. Prof. Gavin Screaton and Clare Terlouw (Head of LifeArc Ventures) are also members of the Board of Directors.

Cambridge-based SolasCure has administered its wound-cleaning technology (Aurase Wound Gel) to its first Phase IIa study patient. Aurase contains an enzyme cloned from medical maggots. The company is as a spin-off from BRAIN Biotech AG.

Manchester-based F2G enters collaboration with Japanese Shionogi to develop and commercialise their antifungal agent in Europe and Asia. Shinogi will conduct the clinical trials and commercialise the antifungal solution and F2G will receive upfront payment of $100 million and milestones of up to $380m.

European Patent Office (EPO) has proposed to abolish the ‘10-day rule’, a legal fiction under which official communications from the EPO are deemed to have been delivered to the recipient 10 days after when they were actually received.

London-based and Alphabet subsidiary Isomorphic Labs has announced part of its new management team: Miles Congreve as CSO from Sosei Heptares where he pioneered structure-based drug design for GPCRs; Dr Sergei Yakneenas CTO (ex-CTO at Sophia Genetics, where he developed a global AI-based molecular diagnostics and imaging software platform); Dr Max Jaderberg as Director of Machine Learning (joining from DeepMind, where he lead the Open-Ended Learning research team); and Alexandra Richenburg as Director of People Operations (ex-VP of People at Eigen Technologies).

Cambridge-based Qkine is recruiting for various positions. The startup combines proprietary production technology with best-in-class protein engineering to tackle biology and scale-up challenges in manufacturing high-purity, animal-free growth factors, cytokines and other complex proteins.

Cambridge-based Aderestia Therapeutics has appointed Prof. John Perry as Vice President. Dr Perry is a human genetics pioneer, Professor of Molecular Endocrinology at the University of Cambridge and Medical Research Council(MRC) Programme Leader and Investigator at the University’s Institute of Metabolic Science. Prof. Perry will help Aderestia to expand their proprietary Synthetic Rescue Atlas, which helps indicating expansion from gateway genetics diseases into more prevalent ones.

St. Andrews-based clinical-stage company Pneumagen has appointed Dr John Beadle as Non-Executive Director. The company is developing Neumifil, an intranasal spray to reduce, prevent and manage respiratory disease exacerbations caused by viral infections. Dr. John Beadle is the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of PsiOxus Therapeutics.

The TIGIT drama: Roche announced last week a second Phase 3 trial failure for tiragolumab. The treatment for non-small cell lung cancer was unable to show the progression-free survival achieved by Tecentriq alone. Meanwhile, iTeos is revaluating (sic) how to move forward with their own TIGIT drug, for which GSK has paid them $625 million upfront. Novartis spent $300 million to BeiGene’s ociperlimab in December 2021, only 7 months after BMS cashed out $200 million to Agenus for their own TIGIT candidate. The idea is that modulating TIGIT (T-cell immunoreceptor with immunoglobulin and ITIM domain) can enhance the effects of PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitors. Yes, that is right: everybody is on the case and so far big pharma TIGIT deals total over $6 billion. Moreover, it is not just about the checkpoint inhibitors: blockbuster Kertruda’s patent is expiring in 2028 and friends at Merck see TIGITs as an opportunity to extend the patent life. All eyes are on Gilead and Arcus' Phase 2 ARC-7 trial of their anti-TIGIT domvanalimab, but results will not arrive until the second half of the year. Will see if the industry can hold its breath for that long.

Pfizer to acquire Biohaven for $11.6 billion. This constitutes its biggest deal in the last five years. Pfizer will pay $148.5 per share in cash, a 78% premium Biohaven’s closing price on Monday 9th May. This deal might be the first of many to come as a large number of blockbusters are about to experience patent cliffs thus leaving their rightholders in need of pipeline boosters. Biohaven’s most famous drug is Nurtec ODT, approved for acute treatment and prevention of migraine in adults.

Yes, friends, it is happening. If you tend to misspell GlaxoSmithKline, the big pharma player has got you covered: they have just changed their official name to just GSK.

Berkshire Hathaway has pulled out of its investments in Abbvie ($410 million) and Bristol Meyers Squibb ($324.4 million). They also divested from Merck before the launch of their COVID-19 pill, so it is yet to see if this was a better decision.

Wonderful article by John Maranganore, former founding CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA, USA, where he reflects on the company history. Absolutely worth-reading.

Jane Osbourne OBE talk on ‘Mining the immune system for protective antibodies’. Their link does not work for indexing, but if interested look for the title in Vimeo.

Two stories on lipid nanoparticles, one on the becoming process and the other on the future of the technology.

Curious about OMass Therapeutics behind-the-scenes story? This is for you.

How can Big Pharma attract the best talent?

BBC Sounds features Oxford Nanopore Technlogy: The DNA sequencing revolution.