ImmuPharma has agreed a £50mln equity drawdown facility, one of the biggest deals of its kind in London, to fund the late-stage development of Lupuzor, its breakthrough drug for auto-immune disease lupus. The five-year funding package will be provided by Darwin Strategic, owned by Henderson Global Investors.

ImmuPharma’s £50mln equity funding package agreed with a subsidiary of Henderson Global Investors “mitigates risk” and provides “external validation” for the firm’s plans to take its lead drug into late-stage clinical trials.

The struggle for any ambitious biopharma group is finding sufficient cash to take a breakthrough treatment to the point where it maximises value for the company and its investors. For e-Therapeutics, the funding silver bullet was fired in March when it successfully concluded a £40mln cash call

City broker N+1 Singer has raised its valuation of Oxford Pharmascience by 33% to reflect the potential of its adaptation of a top selling painkiller. Its target price rises to 9.2 pence a share – representing a significant premium to the current share price of 3.92 pence.

Cash rich drug developer e-Therapeutics is gaining momentum with the first findings from its phase I programme of its lead cancer drug, ETS2101, coming through, while its anti-depressant drug, ETS6103, is lined up for a phase IIb trial.