LONDON – Antibody prospecting specialist Alchemab Therapeutics Ltd. has raised £60 million (US$82.7 million) in a series A round, to take programs in neurodegenerative diseases and cancer into the clinic.
Shares of Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:IONS) fell 21.7% to $43.59 on March 23 after its longtime partner, Roche Holding AG, decided to stop dosing the antisense oligonucleotide tominersen in a global phase III manifest Huntington's disease (HD) study. Roche subsidiary Genentech Inc. said the move was based on an independent data monitoring committee's preplanned assessment of the drug's risk-benefit profile.
Small-molecule mRNA translation expert Anima Biotech Inc. has landed a significant new preclinical research deal with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., covering as many as six programs for genetically defined neurological diseases. The deal starts with $120 million in up-front and preclinical research milestone payments for Anima, but altogether the two-part collaboration could hold as much as $2.3 billion in clinical and commercial milestone payouts for the company, providing substantial support for its internal pipeline, Anima co-founder and CEO Yochi Slonim told BioWorld.
Bionaut Labs emerged from five years in stealth mode raising $20 million to develop Bionauts, microrobots designed to deliver therapies to treat brain disorders. The financing will support the company’s therapeutic program in glioma through preclinical development and further research and development in Huntington’s disease.
Bionaut Labs emerged from five years in stealth mode raising $20 million to develop Bionauts, microrobots designed to deliver therapies to treat brain disorders. The financing will support the company’s therapeutic program in glioma through preclinical development and further research and development in Huntington’s disease. Khosla Ventures led the financing with participation by Upfront Ventures, Revolution LLC, BOLD Capital Partners, and Compound.
Shares of Vaccinex Inc. fell to an all-time low on Sept. 22 after top-line results of the phase II trial, Signal, found its SEMA4D inhibitor, pepinemab, failed to improve measures of cognition in people with early manifest Huntington's disease following 18 months of treatment.
Prilenia Therapeutics BV, a private company developing an experimental therapy for Huntington's disease (HD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), has raised $62.5 million in a series A financing round to support new trials in the indications, both of which are expected to yield top-line data by the end of 2022, CEO Michael Hayden told BioWorld.
Early detection of neurodegenerative disease even before symptoms emerge is the ideal when it comes to trying to treat or prevent progression. But that has remained difficult, as brain tissue that isn’t available until after death is typically the most definitive. Now, researchers have used an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to identify genetic expression data over time and correlate them in blood and postmortem brain tissue samples from subjects with either Alzheimer’s or Huntington’s disease.
Shares of Cambridge, Mass.-based Wave Life Sciences Ltd. (NASDAQ:WVE) lost 49.5% of their value, or $7.82, to close at $7.99 as investors learned of top-line data from the ongoing phase Ib/IIa Precision HD2 trial testing WVE-120102 in Huntington’s disease.
Austin, Texas-based Asuragen Inc. is joining forces with Wave Life Sciences USA Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., to change the fatal trajectory of Huntington’s disease.
