Big Pharma spin-outs may on average have raised 50% more private money than non-spin-outs over the last five years, but it's not yet clear whether they always deliver better returns on investment. Still, spin-outs remain an investor favorite, and in Europe are becoming the mainstay of a sustainable biopharma industry.

Lectus was founded in December 2002, to develop and commercialize a second generation of ion channel modulating drugs. By targeting the plethora of accessory proteins that regulate the activity of the ion channel pore-forming proteins rather than the pore-forming proteins themselves Lectus believes its drugs will be safer and more effective than currently marketed products.

Summarizing the month in European dealmaking.

Automated medium- and high-throughput ion channel screening systems promise to jump start the search for ion channel modulating drugs, a vast and promising area of drug discovery. In Vivo Europe Rx looks at Sophion Bioscience, Nanion Technologies, and Xention Discovery, three emerging European firms whose platforms may help return ion channels to the forefront of biotech and pharmaceutical companies' discovery targets.