DUBLIN – Verona Pharma plc is adding $25 million cash to its balance sheet, as well as $15 million worth of stock in Nuance Biotech Co. Ltd., and could earn up to $179 million more in milestones linked to the development in the greater China region of ensifentrine, its candidate maintenance therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD).

Flagship Pioneering Inc., the serial biotech-founding investor that created RNA trailblazer Moderna Inc., is putting its money behind Senda Biosciences Inc. and a technology that aims create medicines by changing the way the body interacts with organisms such as plants and microbes. Senda has just announced the closing of a $98 million series B funding round, after completing a $55 million extension that brings total funding raised so far to $143 million.

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.

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.

For the second time, the biopharma industry’s largest event will be held virtually as BIO Digital 2021, with pandemic preparedness and infectious diseases a running theme throughout many of the scheduled sessions.