LONDON – Alentis Therapeutics SA is now equipped to deliver initial proof of concept for its universal approach to treating fibrosis, after raising $67 million in an oversubscribed series B.
San Diego area startup Endeavor Biomedicines Inc. launched in January 2021, with a $62 million series A financing from Omega Funds, Longitude Capital and its own management team. The company is working on one asset, ENV-101 or taladegib, a small-molecule inhibitor targeting the Hedgehog pathway, which it plans to develop for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
DUBLIN – Galecto Biotech Inc. raised $64 million in a series D funding round, which will enable the company to complete a phase IIb trial of its lead drug candidate, the inhaled galectin-3 inhibitor GB-0139, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and to move two other programs into phase II studies, in liver fibrosis and myelofibrosis, before year-end.
LONDON – Redx Pharma plc is in the process of handing its RXC-006 program over to Astrazeneca plc, after signing a potential $377 million development and commercialization deal for the porcupine inhibitor in the treatment of fibrotic disease.
LONDON – With results of its first phase I trial imminent, inflammasome specialist Nodthera Ltd. has raised $55 million in a series B round, providing funding for phase II proof-of-concept studies and to advance a second, brain-penetrant, compound to the clinic.
Any worries by Promedior Inc. investors after Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) backed away last year from its option to acquire the firm were resolved in a big way by last week's news that Roche Holding AG is taking over the company in a transaction valued as high as $1.39 billion. Privately held, Lexington, Mass.-based Promedior's lead asset is PRM-151, a recombinant form of human pentraxin-2 (PTX-2) protein that won breakthrough designation from the FDA earlier this year for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
