A strong third quarter has pushed biopharma financings ahead of several pre-pandemic years, as follow-on offerings and private placements picked up the pace. IPOs and venture capital rounds dipped below prior quarters, but the overall amount raised so far this year has placed 2022 as the fifth best financing year among the last 10, ahead of both 2019 and 2017.
Araris Biotech AG has raised $24 million in a second round of funding, as it completes preparations to take its lead antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) into the clinic. The company continues to accumulate preclinical data indicating its novel linker technology makes for an improved therapeutic index compared to approved ADCs, and the lead product is expected to begin clinical development next year.
Covira Inc., a spinout from The University of Chicago, has closed its first dilutive funding via an oversubscribed $1.0 million seed round after raising $9.1 million of nondilutive funding.
Nested Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth, revealing $125 million in equity funding and plans to bring precision oncology to the next level by probing the genomics and structural biology of key cancer targets more deeply than before, in an ambitious bid to find new driver mutations, new druggable pockets, and new chemistry that will expand the current arsenal of targeted therapies.
Vergent Bioscience Inc. raised $21.5 million in a series B financing round to advance development of VGT-309, its targeted fluorescent imaging agent that illuminates tumors during open, minimally invasive and robotic-assisted surgeries. The company plans to use the funds to support a phase II trial at the University of Pennsylvania that focuses on lung cancer and a multicenter study that will examine the agent’s use in other indications.