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.

Precision cancer care company Simbiosys Inc. has raised $15 million to accelerate development of its Tumor Scope software platform for management of solid tumors. The application enables oncologists to virtualize cancer tumors and simulate a patient’s response to specific drug therapies by combining artificial intelligence with biophysical simulations. The technology models the impact of drug delivery, drug sensitivity, metabolism and spatial heterogeneity and provides data that can be used to inform individual treatment plans.

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.

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.