Gene therapy developer Kate Therapeutics Inc. (KateTx), which is developing next-generation adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors that target skeletal and cardiac muscle, has unveiled $51 million series A round and a licensing deal with Astellas Pharma Inc.
AAVantgarde Bio SrL raised €61 million (US$65 million) in series A funding to take forward two novel approaches to gene therapy that aim to overcome the packaging limits of adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors. The company plans to move its lead program, in retinitis pigmentosa associated with Usher syndrome type 1b, into the clinic later this year. A second program, in Stargardt disease, is a couple of years behind it.
Launching with a $300 million series A financing, Renagade Therapeutics Inc. has set out to target disease on a large scale – at every point throughout the human body where disease forms – through its RNA platform designed to deliver, code, edit and insert genetic information. The round, led by founding investors MPM Bioimpact and F2 Ventures, is the largest venture capital (VC) round for a U.S.-based biopharma company this year, and it is among the top series A rounds for the industry to date.
Four years after its founding, Myeloid Therapeutics Inc. raised $73 million to advance mRNA immunotherapy technology that targets and activates myeloid cells. Proceeds from the financing will go toward MT-101, the company’s first autologous CAR monocyte, which is in a phase I/II trial for T-cell lymphoma. It also will accelerate development of MT-302, a potentially first-in-class TROP2-FcA mRNA lipid nanoparticle candidate, which is ready for a phase I/II study for TROP2-expressing solid tumors.
Ray Therapeutics Inc.’s upsized and oversubscribed $100 million series A financing will support the firm’s ongoing efforts with optogenetics, an approach that deploys adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy to deliver a light-sensitive, highly bioengineered protein found in nature to retinal cells.
Regulatory T-cell specialist Dualyx NV has closed a €40 million (US$43.5 million) series A to progress the lead autoimmune disease program to the clinic and to take forward two other Treg-based therapies. The company brings together expertise in antibody design with understanding of the role Tregs play in supressing the immune response to maintain homeostasis and self-tolerance, preventing autoimmunity.
Nido Biosciences Inc. emerged from stealth by unveiling $109 million in series A and B equity funding and a clinical-stage program in spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy.
Dualyx NV has completed a €40 million (US$44 million) series A financing, allowing the company to advance its lead autoimmune program, DT-001, as well as its pipeline of regulatory T-cell (Treg) candidates.
Diogenx SAS raised €27.5 million (US$30.4 million) in a series A round to move a novel therapy for type 1 diabetes into clinical development. The Marseille, France-based company is building on the research of co-founder Patrick Collombat, an expert in beta-cell regeneration, who is based at the Insitute of Biology Valrose and the University Côte d’Azur, in Nice. Its lead drug candidate comprises a recombinant R-spondin protein, which acts on the Wnt/beta-catenin signal pathway to boost replication of endogenous functioning beta-cells.
The idea for a new company, Ten63 Therapeutics Inc., started in 2015, when Gilda Szacher Frenkel passed away at age 62 from pancreatic cancer. After sequencing her tumor, her son Marcel discovered that her cancer was driven by mutations to key proteins that regulate cellular processes – all the “usual suspects,” he said. At the time, he remembers they were initially encouraged by the discovery and excited to search for developed drugs that could help her. “Here was this blueprint telling us what was wrong,” Marcel Frenkel said, “but, unfortunately, those mutations were unactionable. There were no drugs to modulate the main oncologic drivers.”
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