DUBLIN – Fans of “His Dark Materials” and the “Book of Dust,” Philip Pullman’s series of fantasy novels set in Oxford, U.K. and more remote corners of the earth, are familiar with alethiometers. In the hands of a highly select number of characters, these complex, compass-like devices can interrogate a mysterious substance called “dust” – an elementary particle associated with consciousness – and provide trusted answers to the most crucial questions.

Mythic Therapeutics Inc. officially launched with an oversubscribed series B round that garnered $103 million to design smarter, safer antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) by way of a technology originated by the company and dubbed Fatecontrol. Co-founder and CEO Alex Nichols said that, after about 40 years’ worth of development – and despite fairly recent wins – ADCs have been hampered by “toxicity and poor therapeutic index [that] have stopped them from reaching what we would consider to be their full potential.”

Immunotherapeutic targeting of stage-specific embryonic antigen-4 has been shown to inhibit pancreatic cancer growth in animal models and cancer cell lines, indicating that this approach has promise for treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and possibly other SSEA-4-positive cancers, according to new a Taiwan/U.S. collaborative study.