News round-up for 10-14 July by DDW Digital Content Editor Diana Spencer.
Despite the bad news for the UK life sciences industry this week that international investment dropped nearly 50% in 2022, both private and public funding activity has continued apace in the wider drug discovery sector, including within the UK itself, with investment into synthetic biology, cell and gene therapy training, cancer drugs and generative AI.
The top stories:
Synthetic biology company raises $10m in financing round
Camena Bioscience has closed a $10m Series A financing round, which will be used to scale operations and continue development of DNA synthesis platform gSynth.
£1.6m awarded to progress ovarian cancer cell therapy
NK:IO has been awarded £1.6m ($2.1m) in grant funding from Innovate UK’s New Cancer Therapeutics programme.
£1m grant to create VR training platform for CGT professionals
UK technology company FourPlus, along with collaborators Holosphere and the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, have been awarded funding from Innovate UK to create and test a mixed reality training platform that enables customised training delivery for pharmaceutical companies and healthcare.
Nvidia invests $50 million into Recursion for drug AI
Recursion, a clinical stage company decoding biology to industrialise drug discovery, has announced a $50 million investment by NVIDIA, which was executed as a private investment in public equity (PIPE).
International investors abandon UK life sciences
International investors are abandoning UK life sciences as excessive revenue clawback rates start to bite, according to the latest Life Sciences Competitiveness Indicators published by the government.
