A researcher at Australia’s Children’s Cancer Institute has been awarded a 3-year US$400,000 grant by the Chadtough Defeat DIPG Foundation to develop and test a new drug candidate for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).

Thirtyfivebio Ltd. has announced the award of a £643,371 (US$817,000) grant by Innovate UK to support work on first-in-class small-molecule inhibitors of G protein-coupled receptor 35 (GPR35).

Snipr Biome ApS has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a microbiome-directed intervention designed to improve environmental enteric dysfunction by reducing gut entero-pathogen burden in pregnant women from low- and middle-income countries.

Opus Genetics Inc. has received $1.7 million in project-based funding from the Foundation Fighting Blindness to help advance two preclinical candidate programs for inherited retinal diseases.

Alchemab Therapeutics Ltd. has been awarded a grant of $595,000 by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to support its Parkinson’s disease program.

7 Hills Pharma Inc. has been awarded $4.7 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to support its cell/gene therapy development program.

In 2024, the value of biopharma nonprofit deals is tracking slightly higher than the previous year, but still significantly lower than the value seen in prior years. Meanwhile, grants to biopharma firms have dropped by more than 50% compared to last year’s monthly average. The U.S. Department of Defense emerged as the leading grant issuer to biopharma firms, and also saw the highest-value nonprofit deal in the sector.

Nanite Inc. has been awarded a $1.8 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to design and optimize polymeric delivery vehicles to deliver DNA-encoded therapeutics.

Geneventiv Therapeutics Inc. has been awarded a Direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for approximately $2.5 million from the National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support development of a universal gene therapy for hemophilia A or B with or without inhibitors.

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. has been awarded a grant from CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator) to support initial preclinical activities on the antibiotics program recently acquired from Spexis.