EIB Group establishes EUR 25 billion guarantee fund to deploy new investments in response to COVID-19 crisis

April 2020- EIB Group establishes EUR 25 billion guarantee fund to deploy new investments in response to COVID-19 crisis

The EIB Group is set to play a key role in the fight against the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a recommendation by the Eurogroup on 9 April, the Board of Directors of the European Investment Bank (EIB) today backed the creation of a €25 billion European COVID-19 guarantee fund. The fund will enable the EIB Group to scale up its support for European companies up to an additional €200 billion – with a focus on SMEs.

More here: https://www.eif.org/what_we_do/guarantees/news/2020/eib-group-establishes-eur-25-billion-guarantee-fund-to-deploy-new-investments-in-response-to-covid-19-crisis.htm


VentureEU: European Commission invests EUR 410 million in Venture capital

Brussels 13 April 2018 - Thanks to cornerstone investments totalling €410 million from the EU that crowd in private investors,  six Venture EU funds selected by the European Commission and the EIF, will raise up to €2.1 billion of public and private investment.

The six VentureEU funds are
  Aberdeen Standard Investments, UK and continental Europe
  Axon Partners Group, Spain
  Isomer Capital, UK
  LGT, Vaduz
  Lombard Odier Asset Management, Brussels and Switzerland
  Schroder Adveq 

More information
Brussels - February 2017
OncoDNA SA (Gosselies, Belgium)
OncoDNA launches projects ARCHE and MONCODANEUM with a total budget of €16m.
Read more on http://www.oncodna.com/news-and-events/thanks-to-support-from-the-walloon-region-belgium-oncodna-launches-projects-arche-and-moncodaneum-with-a-total-budget-of-eur16m


OncoDNA awarded the prize "Most promising company of the year 2015"


Brussels - 19 October 2015
OncoDNA SA (Gosselies, Belgium)  has won the third edition of "
Most promising company of the year" organised by EY (formerly Ernst & Young). The laureate won over formidable opponents as Domo Bios & Acar'Up, MyMicroinvest and Universem. 
OncoDNA, a Cancer Theranostic Company, is a European start-up founded in 2012 which provides a personal protection in cancer through the unique combination of DNA sequencing and molecular pathology. More than 2,000 patients in fifty countries have already appealed to OncoDeep, a tool that provides oncologists support treatment choices based on targeted therapies.  
With yhe platform OncoShare the company wants to ensure better communication between the patient, the oncologist, the community of experts-oncologists and OncoDNA.
 Source : ONCODNA

It has among its Board member, Jean Stephenne, former director of GSK Vaccines.


Steven Keating - fighting cancer through curiosity









Opening data to patients raises questions. Will worried patients inundate physicians with time-consuming questions? Will sharing patient data add to legal risks? One detail in the yearlong study of OpenNotes underlines doctors’ concerns; 105 primary physicians completed the study, but 143 declined to participate.
Still, the experience of the doctors in the evaluation seemed reassuring. Only 3 percent said they spent more time answering patient questions outside of visits. Yet knowing that patients could read the notes, one-fifth of the physicians said they changed the way they wrote about certain conditions, like substance abuse and obesity.
Evidence of the benefit to individuals from sharing information rests mainly on a few studies so far. For example, 55 percent of the members of the epilepsy community on PatientsLikeMe, a patient network, reported that sharing information and experiences with others helped them learn about seizures, and 27 percent said it helped them be more adherent to their medications.

Cardio3 BioSciences acquires CorQuest Medical Inc.

5 November 2014- Mont saint Guibert, Belgium
The belgian biotech Cardio3 BioSciences, leader in the discovery and development of regenerative, protective and reconstructive therapies, announces today that it has acquired U.S.-based CorQuest Medical Inc.

CorQuest Medical, based in Miami, but incorporated in Delaware in July 2012, specializes in the development of innovative devices and technologies for cardiac surgery. It was founded by a Belgian,  Dr. Didier De Cannière.

Euronext Brussels and Paris: CARD

Featured company : ILLUMINA, San Diego, California

20 October 2014 - illumina, Inc. based in Sand Diego, California, is an American company incorporated in April 1998 that develops, manufactures and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function (DNA sequencing, Genome sequencing).
NASDAQ:  Illumina

GSK develops Ebola vaccine

19 October 2014- GSK says Ebola vaccine development progressing at 'unprecedented rate'

GlaxoSmithKline is working to develop a vaccine to combat Ebola, which has killed thousands in West Africa, was moving at a rapid pace.

"Development of the vaccine candidate is progressing at an unprecedented rate, with first phase 1 safety trials with the vaccine candidate underway in the USA, UK and Mali, and further trials due to start in the coming weeks," the firm said in a statement posted on its website.
Source : REUTERS

GSK on London Stock exhange : GSK

Ebola - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg And Wife Priscilla Chan Donate $25 Million To Fight Ebola

14 October 2014 - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced on Tuesday that they are donating $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation (CDC)  to fight Ebola.
Zuckerberg revealed the donation in a post on Facebook. In a status update, Zuckerberg compared the disease to Polio and HIV, noting that 8,400 people have already been infected by Ebola and that it has the potential to spread quickly.
 
Billionaire Bill Gates announced last month that

L'INAMI publie son rapport annuel 2013


Brussels - 13 octobre 2014 
L' INAMI - l'nstitut national d'assurance maladie-invalidité (Belgique) vient de publier son rapport annuel 2013. Le rapport complet est disponible sur le site de l'INAMI (www.inami.fgov.be). Il fournit également un aperçu détaillé des statistiques de l'assurance maladie-invalidité.

Ce rapport trace le portrait de l’assurance soins de santé et indemnités en Belgique. On y apprend notamment que :

  • Le Belge a coûté en moyenne 2256,04 euros à l'assurance soins de santé en 2012, soit 3,18% de plus qu'en 2011 et 7,80% de plus qu'en 2010, ressort-il du rapport 2012 de l'Inami publié lundi. Le nombre de personnes invalides a quant à lui continué à augmenter en 2013.
  • A la fin décembre 2013, 320 823 personnes (salariés et indépendants) percevaient des indemnités d'invalidité en Belgique, soit 4,5% de la population entre 15 et 64 ans. Cela représente une augmentation de 5,37% par rapport à 2012. La première cause d'invalidité reste les troubles mentaux (109 000 personnes fin 2013, ou 38,4% des personnes en invalidité). Le nombre d'invalides pour cette raison a grimpé de près de 58% en dix ans et de 88% depuis 2000, souligne le rapport.
La santé mentale représente
Valby, DK - 05-05-2014 - Lundbeck receives grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for biological markers identification in Parkinson’s disease

A Lundbeck research program aiming to increase the knowledge of how a specific change in a gene (Lrrk2) contributes to an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease was granted DKK 3,5m from The Michael J. Fox Foundation, the world's largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's disease research.

Medical device maker Sequana raises $26m after quitting US

28 April 2014 - Sequana Medical  raises $26m after relocating from California to Zug in Switerland.
Sequana raised the investment in a financing round led by Life Sciences Partners, a European private equity fund (Germany, The Netherlands).
Source :
- Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afbd51e8-cc79-11e3-bd33-00144feabdc0.html#axzz30DLBh8zz
- Sequana news


About Life Sciences Partners
In April 2011, LSP launched its LSP Life Sciences Fund on Euronext. This fund is open-ended and publicly listed. As such, it allows investors to buy shares of the fund at any time, via their (internet) broker. The fund’s Bloomberg ticker is LSP NA and its ISIN Code is NL0009756394.

Novadip Biosciences

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - January 2014 - Belgian medical researchers have succeeded in repairing bones using stem cells from fatty tissue, with a new technique they believe could become a benchmark for treating a range of bone disorders.
The team at the Saint Luc university clinic hospital in Brussels have treated 11 patients, eight of them children, with fractures or bone defects that their bodies could not repair, and a spin-off is seeking investors to commercialize the discovery.

G8 dementia summit London

London - 13 December 2013 - The UK is hosting a G8 summit on dementia in London on 11 December. The summit aims to develop co-ordinated global action on dementia.
see G8-dementia-summit

Skolkovo Innovation Center: Russia investing $4 Billion in ‘innovation city’ Skolkovo to insemminate startup culture

9 August 2013 

The Russian government is spending billions of dollars to manufacture startup culture.

Skolkovo is a science park outside of Moscow that aims to be the “Russian Silicon Valley.” It is the country’s largest state-sponsored innovation hub, and it will receive around $4 billion in state funding between now and 2020.

 File:Campus-SKOLKOVO.jpg

Skolkovo Foundation president Viktor Vekselberg said he expects to raise more than $11 billion in private investment by 2020 and that Skolkovo will not need government financing after 2025. He also predicted that this “innovation city” will contribute $6.5 billion to Russia’s economy over that time

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: New partnership to fight poverty-related diseases

10 June 2013 - 
The European Union and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have today pledged to work together to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other poverty-related diseases that together affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. The agreement, signed in Paris today by foundation co-chair Bill Gates and European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, creates a new strategic partnership for research in the area. Between 2007 and 2011, the foundation and the European Commission have contributed around 2.4 billion euro (3.1 billion USD) to research and development focused on poverty-related infectious diseases, supporting the development of more than 20 new and improved products.

The partnership will invest in research and development of life-saving interventions to improve the health and well-being of people living in developing countries. In addition to accelerating the development of much-needed drugs, vaccines and diagnostics, the two organisations will also seek to improve affordable and sustainable pathways to ensure that these products quickly reach those in greatest need.

More information: 

Google Ventures is funding 8 healthcare and life sciences companies

April 2013 - 
Google Ventures has been backing startups through its venture capital fund since 2009 and offers a pretty diverse range of services to entrepreneurs. It has eight healthcare and life science businesses among its portfolio companies spanning innovative areas such as DNA analysis, accelerated drug development, and oncology analytics.

Actavis Watson Pharmaceuticals acquiert la société liégeoise Uteron Pharma pour 305 millions de dollars

 



 January 2013
Actavis, New Jersey, (anciennement Watson Pharmaceuticals) a racheté Uteron Pharma, société biopharmaceutique liégeoise, pour un montant de USD 150 million cash et USD 155 millions par versements d’étapes (potential future milestone payments).


Uteron Pharma, dont le personnel s’élève à 60 personnes, est une spin-off spécialisée dans la contraception et la fertilité, la ménopause et l’ostéoporose, les infections vaginales et les cancers féminins.

Par ailleurs, cette collaboration devrait permettre de poursuivre des projets de recherche ainsi que le lancement sur le marché de produits demandant des investissements importants, estime le CEO d’Uteron Pharma, Stijn Van Rompay, qui souligne que le personnel ne sera pas affecté par ce rachat.

Source: RTL.be, Express.be, Actavis, Uteron

Uteron Pharma SA, Rue Saint Georges 5, B- 4000 Liège

TiGenix to Raise Capital via a Private Placement of New Ordinary Shares


19 December 2012 - Leuven, Belgium – TiGenix NV (Euronext Brussels: TIG) today announced that it will launch a private placement of up to 8,629,385 new ordinary shares.


http://www.tigenix.com/public/uploads/files/Tigenix_logo_colour_rgb.jpgTiGenix will use the funds mainly for the commercial roll out of ChondroCelect in selected European markets and for progressing with the clinical development of Cx601 in complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's patients.

The new shares will be placed through an accelerated bookbuilding procedure. The placing will start on 19 December 2012. The Company has asked the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) to suspend its shares from trading on NYSE Euronext Brussels. Trading in the share will resume shortly following the publication of the results of the placing.

The Company will announce the results of the placing as soon as possible after closing of the bookbuilding.

Source : tigenix.com