Medtrace Pharma A/S raised $30 million in a series B round to ramp its platform for production, infusion and analysis of ¹⁵O-water in medical imaging. Swiss-based Swisscanto Invest, along with fund managers ATP and Bankinvest group from Denmark, are the lead investors. “We can now ramp our European and U.S. expansions plans in myocardial perfusion imaging and in other indications in need of perfusion data,” Martin Stenfeldt, CEO and co-founder of Medtrace, told BioWorld.

Phase II data from Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc. in advanced melanoma at the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology turned up an important relationship between previous anti-PD-1 therapy exposure and the durability of treatment response. Findings added weight to the idea that tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) should be deployed earlier in therapy.

Remegen Ltd.’s HER2-targeted disitamab vedotin became the first domestic antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) to win marketing approval in China, just three months after the company scored its first NDA approval in China for its lupus drug Tai’ai (telitacicept). The news sent Remegen’s share price (HKEX:9995) up 12.8% in Hong Kong on June 9.

Taking its mission as looking at how cells function as opposed to looking at them anatomically, Kojin Therapeutics Inc. is launching with a $60 million series A to accelerate its ferroptosis-, or iron-dependent cell death-, based discovery platform for tackling hard-to-treat diseases, including drug-resistant cancers.

Byondis BV is gearing up for a U.S. filing of an antibody-drug conjugate (ADCs) in advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, but CEO Marco Timmers has grand plans to partner up with big pharma and expand into other diseases.