Biotech king Evans lands $50m injection for Ellipses cancer drugs
Sir Christopher Evans, the renowned British biotech entrepreneur, is close to landing $50m (£37m) in funding for a developer of a new portfolio of cancer treatments.
Sky News has learnt Sir Christopher, whose previous companies have included Biovex and Chiroscience, is in the advanced stages of securing the capital for Ellipses Pharma.
City sources said Middle Eastern and Asian investors had provisionally agreed to provide the bulk of the new funding, which is expected to be committed at a valuation of about $800m (£592m).
The capital injection is expected to be the last such fundraising before Sir Christopher seeks an initial public offering for Ellipses Pharma, with Hong Kong the likeliest listing venue.
Ellipses' focus on oncology has previously drawn investment from prominent backers including Sir Tom Hunter's investment vehicle, West Coast Capital.
The London-based company's board members include an executive from Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.
In December, it announced the launch of a clinical trial programme in the UAE.
"This tremendous commitment has led us to the point where our achievements can be brought to bear for the potential benefit of patients in UAE," Sir Christopher said at the time.
"In many ways, we can now bring hope and an innovative therapy to people in the UAE and also enable healthcare professionals to collaborate and share research."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
The countries that could solve Britain's health crisis, according to a professor
When Devi Sridhar was a child, her father, an oncologist, would show her pictures of cancer patients' blackened hearts, livers and lungs as a warning not to smoke. The slides, projected on the walls of her family home in Miami, were enough to put Sridhar and her four siblings off the habit for good. But their father was diagnosed with lymphoma when Sridhar was 12 years old, despite living a healthy life. She got used to a 'crossroads' of good or bad news at every blood test or screening. When he died, at just 49, Sridhar didn't eat for months. Sridhar left school early, graduated from the University of Miami with a medical degree at 18, and went on to be awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford for a PhD in anthropology. She became Prof Sridhar in 2014, when she joined the University of Edinburgh and set up its global health governance programme. Prof Sridhar was one of the first experts to warn that Covid was coming to Britain – in January 2020 – and later advised the Scottish government on its Covid strategy, while she went to fitness boot camps in a local park every day and qualified as a personal trainer. And then, one morning, she got a phone call as she rode the bus to work. A routine smear test had come back showing signs of high-risk HPV, and changes to her cervix. It was 'possibly cancer'. At home in Miami, Prof Sridhar would have been staring down the barrel of huge hospital fees and debt. In Britain, extensive NHS waiting lists meant that the changes to her cervix might not be treated quickly enough to prevent their development. In India, where her parents were born, and where there were no routine cervical cancer screenings, perhaps it never would have been caught 'until it was in an advanced stage,' says Prof Sridhar, two years on. There was no date given for a follow-up consultation, so Prof Sridhar phoned local clinics to ask whether there were any cancelled appointments she could attend. Two months later she secured a slot. Her abnormal cells were frozen, she was given an HPV vaccine to boost her immune response, and now she's cancer-free. It turned a fact that she had always known – that our health is always influenced more by the countries we live in than it is by our lifestyles – into a concrete reality. 'You can bubble yourself off individually,' with a good diet, exercise, air purifiers and water filters, 'but at the end of the day, you're all in it together,' Prof Sridhar says. That's the theme of her latest book, How Not to Die (Too Soon): The Lies We've Been Sold and the Policies That Can Save Us. From her perspective as a global health expert, trying to live for longer is less about changing our own habits and more about realising that 'if I moved to a blue zone, I would probably be doing all the same that people there already do, and I wouldn't be thinking about it,' she explains. Britain 'leads the world in reducing gun violence' and in bringing down smoking rates, but there remains much that we could learn from how things are done elsewhere in the world, says Prof Sridhar. Here is what she knows. Exercising like the Dutch The Netherlands is famous for the bike networks that span its cities. It would be easy to think that the Dutch love to cycle as a part of their culture, but bike lanes originally came about in the 1970s. In 1971, a Dutch girl called Simone Langenhoff was killed as she cycled to school, one of 450 children who died in road traffic accidents that year alone. Her father led a campaign to widen access to safe cycle routes. Now, there are 22,000 miles of cycle paths across the country, and by 2015, a quarter of all trips in the country were made by bike. As a result, getting exercise while you travel to work or to see friends is the default. Almost all Dutch people cycle, and 'only 4 per cent of people don't get the recommended daily amount of exercise,' says Prof Sridhar. This makes it the most fit country in the world, in terms of the amount of exercise people get per week on average. We pale in comparison here in Britain, where one in three men and 40 per cent of women are physically inactive. We have cycle lanes in our cities too, but making people want to use them is another issue. 'If you make walking or cycling safe, people will generally choose it, but people don't feel safe if they're too close to vehicles,' says Prof Sridhar. 'For women, it's often about whether a road is well-lit. We need to think through the barriers and how to tackle them, instead of telling people that their concerns aren't valid.' Prof Sridhar points to Paris as a city where Dutch-style changes are well underway. 'When they created physically separate lanes for cycling, not just a little painted path, the number of women cycling went up radically,' she says. Prof Sridhar would like to see the same in Britain, but first we need an attitude shift, she says. All of us around the world are inherently lazy – if we don't have to exercise, then we often won't. She wishes that the messaging from the government was that 'something is better than nothing,' she says. 'Even as a personal trainer, I struggle to get to the gym for an hour some days, but if I can manage a twenty minute walk, I'll do it, because that's much better than nothing at all.' Eating like the Japanese British adults get more than half of their daily calorie intake each day from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), a situation that has been tied to increased rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer. 'But Britain isn't fatter than people in countries like Japan because we're more stupid, or because we're lazy, or because we don't buy enough diet books,' says Prof Sridhar. It's all about the availability of healthy food – and the habits we learn as we grow up. Prof Sridhar has adapted her own diet to be more similar to what people traditionally eat in Okinawa, a subtropical region of Japan where people are twice as likely to live to 100 as they are in the rest of the country. 'The main carb in the Okinawan diet is sweet potato,' Prof Sridhar says, which is packed with fibre and micronutrients. Then there's the practice of 'only eating until you're 80 per cent full,' as opposed to the culture of 'finishing everything on your plate' that Prof Sridhar (and most of us) grew up with. But even if all of us in Britain knew about its benefits, that wouldn't be enough to keep us healthy. 'If I had a magic wand and could do one thing, it would be to change school meals in Britain, so that at least all kids are getting one really great nutritious meal a day,' Prof Sridhar says. Adolescents in Britain get closer to two thirds of their calorie intake from UPFs, as they're cheaper to mass produce and serve. It's a situation that sets us up to eat badly for life – and shows us how obesity is a nationwide problem, not the fault of individual people. 'We know that eating fruits and vegetables with healthier proteins is more expensive, so there are arguments against subsidising them to be cheaper or changing school meals. But you'll pay either way,' says Prof Sridhar. 'If someone gets Type 2 diabetes at age 19, they'll need support from the NHS for the rest of their life. In the end, they're the same budgets, because it's all taxpayer-funded and supported.' Creating a healthcare system like the Finnish In Britain, life expectancy has been in decline since 2011. In Finland, however, life expectancy has risen by around two years since then for both sexes, and things are only set to get better: by 2070, the average Finnish man should expect to live to 89. Mortality from treatable conditions is lower than the EU average, too. This is a sure sign that Finland has got it right when it comes to healthcare, Prof Sridhar says, as is the fact that cancer survival rates are among the best in Europe. 'When you're diagnosed with cancer, the faster you get access to treatment, the more likely you are to survive. Part of the reason Britain struggles with this is that we can't get treatment within the 60 days, or 30 days, whatever the crucial window is for the particular cancer that you have,' she explains. The big difference is that Finland's health system is built around prevention, says Prof Sridhar. 'With the NHS, we often wait for someone to have a heart attack before we wonder how to save them. Instead, we should look at whether that person knew they were at risk of heart attack. Did they know their blood pressure? Did they know their adiposity levels around their abdomen? It would help if we shifted our thinking and implemented screenings earlier on.' The way to do that is through tax, Prof Sridhar says. 'In Finland, they've done very well to reduce inequality. Capitalism exists, and it's accepted that some people will have nicer lives than others, but there comes a point where you're deemed to have enough. In Britain, there are billionaires and multi-millionaires that pay less tax than an NHS nurse, because of how the system works. We could tax those people properly, and have a healthier society where everyone does better, without putting the onus on normal working people.' Cleaning up our water and air like the Swiss Zurich, in Switzerland, is the least polluted city in the world. It wasn't always that way. In 2010, the city's air was badly polluted, a result of traffic as well as wood-burning for heat in the winter. The city committed to lowering its emissions, which meant reducing the amount of journeys people took by car. Here, as in many countries with cleaner air, 'the message has been about connecting diesel and the danger from air pollution to your health and the health of your loved ones, rather than the environment,' says Prof Sridhar. 'Changing your car is really expensive. Helping people to realise that children who breathe polluted air are more likely to have asthma, and will have changes in their brain, makes it easier for them to take action.' Switzerland also has some of the cleanest tap water in the world, along with Germany. In England, we've 'become worse at separating sewage from the water supply,' says Prof Sridhar. When it comes to fixing that, however, we needn't look so far for answers. 'Scotland has some of the cleanest and best-tasting water in the world, while in England, water quality has declined,' says Prof Sridhar. 'The difference is that in Scotland, our water is publicly owned. When things go wrong, we're able to hold water companies accountable, because the shareholders are people who live here. In England, where water is private and the companies are owned by people overseas, that's much harder to do.' Ageing well like India Prof Sridhar's Nani, her maternal grandmother, lives in Chennai, a big city in the east of India. At 92, she stays active, eats a simple plant-based diet, and has a good social life. She lives independently and can still get about well. 'She hasn't fought ageing, or tried to look younger,' Prof Sridhar says. Prof Sridhar's grandmother has inspired her to pursue 'functional health' rather than attempting to look a certain way. Doing squats and staying flexible is important 'because one day, those are the things that will help you to go to the bathroom on your own,' she says. 'My grandmother would never in a million years say that she's sporty, and it would be helpful to move away from those categories in Britain too,' says Prof Sridhar. It's another change that could start in schools, where at the moment, 'people can feel that they're un-sporty, so can't participate'. India has its own challenges with getting its population to move more – 'people have often had to work hard and move all of their lives just to get food and water, so why would they move in their leisure time?', Prof Sridhar points out – 'but there are fewer care homes in India as well as in Japan, so someone like my grandmother is able to stay living independently for longer, because you can stay in your community for longer'.
The Independent
7 hours ago
- The Independent
Asian shares trade mixed after Wall Street's rally stalls on U.S. economic data
Asian shares were mixed on Thursday, as Wall Street's big recent rally lost some momentum following a pair of potentially discouraging reports on the American economy. U.S. futures edged lower and oil prices declined. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.2% to 37,658.46, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 declined nearly 0.1% to 8,535.10. In South Korea, the Kospi jumped 2.1% to 2,829.48 after the country's new president and leading liberal politician Lee Jae-myung began his term, vowing to restart talks with North Korea and beef up a trilateral partnership with the U.S. and Japan. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.9% to 23,856.54, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed, inching down less than 0.1% to 3,374.30. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged at 5,970.81 and remained 2.8% below its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% to 42,427.74, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to 19,460.49. The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields tumbled following the weaker-than-expected economic updates. One said that activity contracted for U.S. retailers, finance companies and other businesses in the services industries last month, when economists were expecting to see growth. Businesses told the Institute for Supply Management in its survey that all the uncertainty created by tariffs is making it difficult for them to forecast and plan. A second report from ADP suggested U.S. employers outside of the government hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. That could bode ill for Friday's more comprehensive jobs report coming from the U.S. Labor Department, which is one of Wall Street's most anticipated data releases each month. So far, the U.S. job market has remained remarkably resilient despite years of high inflation and now the threat of President Donald Trump's high tariffs. But weakness there could undermine the rest of the economy. Following the reports, traders built up bets that the Federal Reserve will need to cut interest rates later this year in order to prop up the economy, which in turn caused the fall for Treasury yields. The weaker-than-expected ADP report also led Trump to urge Fed Chair Jerome Powell to deliver cuts to rates more quickly. ''Too Late' Powell must now LOWER THE RATE,' Trump said on his Truth Social platform. 'He is unbelievable!!!' The Fed has yet to cut interest rates this year after slashing them through the end of 2024. Part of the reason for the pause is that the Fed wants to see how much Trump's tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation. While lower interest rates could boost the economy, they could also give inflation more fuel. Longer-term Treasury yields have also been rising in recent weeks because of reasons outside the Fed's control. Investors have been demanding the U.S. government pay more in interest to borrow because of worries about whether it's set to add trillions of dollars to its debt through tax cuts under discussion on Capitol Hill. Investors are hoping for deals that will lower Trump's tariffs. But nothing is assured. The European Union's top trade negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, met Wednesday with his American counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.35% from 4.46% late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks traders' expectations for what the Fed will do with overnight interest rates, eased to 3.86% from 3.96%. In other dealings early Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude fell 8 cents to $62.77 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged up 1 cent to $64.87 a barrel. The U.S. dollar rose to 142.87 Japanese yen from 142.78 yen. The euro cost $1.1413, little changed from $1.1418. ___ AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I made £30m in Dubai and was blown away by the architecture, the riches and how safe it is - but this is why after just two years I HAD to leave
An entrepreneur has revealed why he quit Dubai after living there for two years and making an incredible £30 million. Charlie Morgan moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2023, as a 'business decision' more so than a personal one, thanks to Dubai's lucrative tax-free earnings. The businessman, who coaches people online to make money, was a fan of the area at first. In a video on his Youtube channe l, he praised Dubai for promoting a healthy lifestyle, with its strict laws on heavy drinking. Pornography and the use of drugs is also outlawed on the gulf, as well as gambling, which Charlie said 'is a good thing'. He explains: 'If you struggle with any bad habits, then you know it's illegal to do them and you will have to face the book of law if you do partake in stupid things.' The businessman also enthused about how 'safe' Dubai is, and has never seen an example of violence or crime in the two years he was resident there. He said: 'It is so safe, you feel incredibly secure, even in rowdy pubs or rowdy bars. There's no fighting, there's no swearing.' However, his cons outweighed the good, and Charlie has revealed all the reasons he eventually decided to break up with Dubai. Charlie said Dubai is 'so safe, you feel incredibly secure, even in rowdy pubs or rowdy bars. There's no fighting, there's no swearing.' However, his cons outweighed the good 'Impossible' to settle Charlie started by revealing how it's 'impossible' to put down roots in Dubai. He said: 'Living in Dubai feels like a holiday or in an Airbnb because in order for you to have a healthy life, you need to have people love and you need to have a social life and you need to have a love life. 'You need to have a family life and stuff like that.' He continued: 'The issue with Dubai is everyone plans to leave. It's a revolving door of a city which means that people come and people leave.' Charlie added that up to 95 per cent of people he knew in the city had planned to leave at some point. Air quality Charlie explained how 'nobody talks about the air quality' and how you can 'smell' the pollution in the summer months. He said: 'You can taste it. In the morning, your throat congests. 'You'll wake up in the morning with stuff in your nose that you will have to blow out of your nose, like you've got a cold or something. 'In the summer and even in the winter you can see it. I used to live on the Palm [Islands] and I would be able to see buildings a mile or two away from me. 'And in the summer, where the pollution is so bad that you can't see the buildings a mile or two away, there's just this thick layer of polluted fog that surrounds the city and it's really unpleasant.' Construction Dubai's construction sector has seen strong growth over the last decade. But the noise of workers erecting striking new structures and houses eventually got to Charlie. He revealed he lived on a quiet street, but those living in apartments complained about the 'relentless' noise. Charlie said: 'If you live in an apartment block or a high rise, there's always someone changing windows and drilling, and that's a huge problem.' Dating With more men than women in the region, Charlie admitted he struggled to find a partner in Dubai, and found the dating market 'difficult'. The number-savvy businessman attributed it to the 'type' of woman that is 'attracted' to the UAE and its lifestyle. He explained: 'I hate to use the words "market" and "dating" in the same phrase, but Dubai does attract a certain type of woman. 'You're less likely to find a wholesome, maternal figure in Dubai, when you think about the kind of girl who is attracted to Dubai.' Water He went on to reveal how the water is undrinkable and you always have to consume filtered or bottled water instead. The problem with bottled water, he said, is the sodium has been removed from it - and he claimed it's left those in Dubai with an electrolyte deficiency. 'So all the electrolytes in the water are removed from all the drinking water,' he said. 'What happens is you end up dehydrating yourself because these electrolytes hydrate you.' To counter this, Charlie took Himalayan pink salt by using a funnel so he could have electrolytes. Heavy traffic In Dubai, driving or public transport is the typical way to move around, with Charlie highlighting how it is difficult to walk or cycle anywhere. He said: 'It's very much a car-dependent city, which is fine if that's your thing, but I wouldn't mind it if the driving experience was actually okay. 'The driving experience is not great if you want to have a car there, it is very much every man for himself, and there's lots of traffic all the time.' With heavy traffic on the roads, Charlie said journey times could be doubled or even tripled at rush hour. 'The main thing I like about Europe is I can walk out my door now,' he said as he compared home life to the Gulf. 'I can walk to the supermarket if I want to go to the supermarket. 'I can walk to a park, I can walk to the pub, I can walk down to see my friends.' Unclear tax rules Despite many assuming earnings are tax free in the UAE, Charlie said the rules are actually 'totally unclear'. He added: 'For example, there's a 9 per cent corporation tax and I've spoken to many accountants and lawyers that are experts in UAE law and taxation, but no one really knows who has to pay it and what it's for.' Charlie continued: 'I don't like tax jurisdictions that don't have clear-cut rules, because then, before you know it, you're liable for a fine.' Dubai's aesthetic The professional criticised Dubai's entrepreneur aesthetic and how 'everyone looks the same' and 'conforms' to the same identity. 'Everyone wears the same stuff.', he said. 'It's weird, everyone conforms to this identity that I don't really like. 'Prime example, I saw a large group of entrepreneurs at an event, but it wasn't an event that I was attending and there was 40 or 50 of them and they all looked identical.' The professional criticised Dubai's entrepreneur aesthetic and how 'everyone looks the same' and 'conforms' to the same identity He added there is a tendency for people to almost 'morph into this one single high-value human being.' 'In these cities in Europe, there are individuals, people are very bold with their fashion or what they wear, or how they look, or how they speak,' he added. Isolation Charlie went on to reveal how he struggled with isolation while in the capital, and how you 'can't just meet your mates down the pub'. He said: 'Dubai is incredibly isolating and social circles are incredibly hard to break into and they're very cliquey. 'I had a good group of friends in Dubai, a couple of different groups that I would play football with or go for dinners with, and I met some amazing people in Dubai that honestly I'll be friends with for the rest of my life. 'But there's no sense of community in Dubai, none.' And, although he went on networking dinners, Charlie branded them fake, insisting they are merely just a 'transaction'. Time Charlie had a team that was dotted around the world - from South Africa and Europe to the USA. This meant he and his colleagues were working across multiple time zones and his team would start later in the day. 'I found myself working until 11pm and then naturally waking up at 11am or 10am and finishing at midnight', he recalled. 'Now I'm back in the UK, I'm back to my usual schedule of waking up at 5:30am or 6am and then I finish work at like 6pm or 7pm.' Nature Despite living on the beach, surrounded by palm trees, Charlie said Dubai lacked nature and green spaces. He said: 'It was quiet and peaceful and there were birds and crickets and stuff but it still lacked nature, no green space.' However, Charlie did praise the UAE for its beautiful canyons and deserts, but stressed how it's not integrated. While admitting city chiefs are working on addressing the problem, Charlie said: 'You can't just walk through a field or be in some meadows or something'. Police authority Finally, the entrepreneur addressed the well-documented police authority in Dubai and how 'significant' it is. He said: 'The government is obviously autocratic, which means it's not a democracy. 'I don't know quite how they run it but this issue is the final con, that everyone lives in constant fear.' He went on to clarify how he and others constantly had a 'slight fear' in the back of their minds that they would do something wrong, end up arrested and 'put away in jail'. He added: 'I never did anything wrong, but a lot of people I spoke to over there shared this same sort of fear and you'd hear all these stories aren't probably true about p**sing off the wrong local and getting imprisoned.' He went on to clarify how he and others constantly had a 'slight fear' in the back of their minds that they would do something wrong, end up arrested and 'put away in jail' While praising Dubai's leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, he said because the police and government have 'full control' there's less accountability. He added: 'You just need to be aware that there are real consequences to your actions'. Are you thinking of moving away from the UK to somewhere you don't have to pay any income tax?
