Marengo Therapeutics Inc. is opening up a new front in the war on cancer by selectively deploying a tumor-infiltrating subpopulation of T cells, which can be activated by a newly identified, antibody-based mechanism. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company is taking forward a scientific concept that has been germinating for several years at founding investor and company creator ATP, which has now launched the firm with an $80 million series A round. Marengo is gearing up for a first clinical trial in 2022. “It’s a new chapter in T-cell biology,” CEO Zhen Su told BioWorld.
DUBLIN – As its name suggests, Glycoera AG aims to kickstart a new era in protein glycoengineering, and it has closed a CHF45 million (US$49 million) series A round to further its ambition of developing biologic drugs with defined glycosylation profiles that are an intrinsic aspect of their mechanisms.
Clade Therapeutics Inc., which launched with an $87 million series A round, may have what sounds like an ambitious goal: to create scalable, off-the-shelf stem cell-based medicines that can be as accessible to patients as antibody therapies are today. But the startup, backed by more than two decades of advances in the area of induced pluripotent stem cells, is within sight of developing a cell therapy to take into clinical testing.
Aculys Pharma Inc. closed its $60 million series A financing round, with the funds to be used to develop pitolisant (Wakix), a selective histamine H3 receptor antagonist/ inverse agonist, in Japan.
Mozart Therapeutics Inc. CEO Katie Fanning said the firm’s $55 million series A financing will allow the filing of an IND, probably in early 2024, for a prospect in celiac disease. Founded in July 2020, Seattle-based Mozart is based on research into the CD8 T-cell regulatory network, which has been found to play an important role in surveillance, recognition and elimination of inappropriately activated autoreactive and pathogenic immune cells.
There’s a whole group of biotechs trying to create a tougher next-generation CAR T-cell therapy that could have a powerful effect on solid tumors after the technology’s first successes in blood cancer. One of those is London-based Leucid Bio Ltd., which has just raised £11.5 million (nearly US$16 million) in series A financing to develop next-generation CAR T therapies that are able to make it through to solid tumors and attack them.
Tentarix Biotherapeutics LP broke cover with $50 million in series A funding to take forward an industrialized flow cytometry platform that enables it to screen rapidly for multifunctional antibody-based drugs.
DUBLIN – Abalos Therapeutics GmbH raised €32.5 million (US$37.6 million) in a series A extension, taking the total raise to €43 million, enough to enable the company to generate clinical proof-of-concept data with its lead viral immunotherapy for cancer.
Jonathan Moore, who was employee No. 36 when he came to Vertex Inc. in 1990 and ended up spending the next 28 years at the company, realized he wasn’t done with his work in ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters and has now formed Rectify Pharmaceuticals Inc. The new company just closed on a $100 million series A financing to fund development of a pipeline of therapies to restore ABC transporter function for treating genetic diseases.
Aum Biosciences Pte. Ltd., a company developing targeted cancer therapies, has closed a $27 million series A funding round. The Singapore-based company plans to use the proceeds to advance clinical development of its portfolio with immediate initiation of two phase II programs for MNK and tropomyosin receptor kinase inhibitors.
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