Business Roundup

Symeres, a Dutch pharmaceutical services firm, has acquired Exemplify BioPharma, a New Jersey–based contract research firm. The deal marks Symeres’s second US acquisition this year; it previously purchased Organix, a chemistry services firm near Boston.

AbbVie will acquire DJS Antibodies, a UK-based firm that devises antibody treatments targeting proteins such as G-protein-coupled receptors. AbbVie will pay $255 million and may make milestone payments.

Lonza will expand its cell and gene therapy process and analytical development labs in Houston, adding about 1,400 m² of space, and in Geleen, the Netherlands, adding about 420 m². Lonza expects the labs to be running by the end of the year.

CatSci plans to expand oligonucleotide production at its site in Cardiff, Wales. The drug services firm, a 2010 spin-off from AstraZeneca’s catalyst screening facility, recently announced an unspecified investment from Keensight Capital.

Dow will collaborate with CAS to accelerate R&D via products such as a new CAS scientific information search and retrieval platform that can accelerate identification of new materials. CAS is a division of the American Chemical Society, which publishes C&EN.

Mablink has raised $31 million in series A funding. The French company specializes in developing antibody-drug conjugates to treat cancer. It will use the cash to advance its lead candidate, which treats ovarian cancer, into the clinic.

Normunity has launched with $65 million in financing to develop “immune normalizers,” which it says are a new class of agents that target previously undiscovered mechanisms of immune disruption in cancer. The company is founded on research from Lieping Chen’s lab at Yale School of Medicine.

Pfizer has invested $35 million in the autoimmune disease company Anokion and has agreed to support the development of Anokion’s lead drug candidate, which treats celiac disease. Anokion intends to start dosing patients in a Phase 2 trial of the drug later this year.