TORONTO – Audioptics Medical Inc. has raised a C$1.9 million (US$1.5 million) seed investment round for development of a device that visualizes and assesses the structures of the middle ear to help patients avoid surgery for conductive hearing loss. Audioptics Medical CEO Dan MacDougall told BioWorld the investment marks a major step in his company’s path towards commercial development of its flagship product, the Ossiview Middle Ear Imaging system.

The allocation of capital to the build-out of next-generation gene therapies continues apace. Dyno Therapeutics Inc., a leader in applying artificial intelligence to advanced capsid engineering, raised $100 million in a series A round to fund its expansion and that of its Capsidmap platform.

Neuroelectrics Inc. garnered $17.5 million in a series A fundraising round led by the Morningside Group of Hong Kong. The Cambridge, Mass. and Barcelona-based brain stimulation company plans to use the funds primarily to advance its pivotal trial of the Starstim system in refractory focal epilepsy and its at-home feasibility study in refractory major depressive disorder and related infrastructure, Neuroelectrics co-founder and CEO Ana Maiques told BioWorld. Supportive infrastructures for the trials include brain modeling, the platform for remote montage delivery, and clinical and regulatory resources.

Eikon Therapeutics Inc., a startup leveraging advanced optics and machine learning to track protein dynamics for drug discovery, has closed a $148 million series A financing. Led by a high-profile CEO, former Merck & Co. Inc. R&D chief Roger Perlmutter, and with the counsel of two Nobel prize winners, its team is working to "expand the druggable proteome by targeting protein dynamics directly."

LONDON – A year on from delivering positive phase IIb data, Oculis SA has raised $57 million in an oversubscribed series C, to take OCS-01, a topical nanoparticle formulation of dexamethasone, through two phase III trials.