The music still goes on for biotech investment – it’s just not as loud and vibrant as it was during the heady days of 2020 and 2021, according to experts at this year’s LSX World Congress in London. After the rush to invest in biotech during the last two years, it has become an uphill battle to raise money – but the message from several panel experts at the event is that there is still hope.

At the annual Biomed Israel conference, held in Tel Aviv, Eyal Lifschitz, co-founder of Israeli venture capital fund Peregrine Venture, urged entrepreneurs to adapt their business strategy or face a long, difficult road to exit. With strategic companies increasingly favoring companies later in development, Lifschitz advised innovators to expand their vision beyond the traditional buyers.

The short-term future is a little clearer for Israeli precision oncology startup Oncohost Ltd. now that it has closed a $35 million series C fundraising round. The new infusion more than doubled the previous amount raised, bringing total investment to more than $50 million. The company plans to use the funds to expand its PROPHETIC trial of the company’s machine learning-based host response profiling platform, Prophet, to additional locations worldwide and new indications.

Askgene Pharma Inc., which less than two weeks ago reported positive initial data from an ongoing phase I/II trial testing its claudin 18.2-targeting candidate, ASKB-589, added $20 million in a series A round, intended to advance the company’s clinical pipeline and support further development of its Smartkine cytokine drug platform.

IPOs continue to be sluggish but two companies, Pepgen Inc. and Bausch & Lomb Corp., that began trading May 6 managed to sidestep the turbulence despite having to lower their expectations before the market opened.