Following steady expansion of its base among global pharmaceutical companies, Correlia Biosystems Inc. has secured the capital needed to make its nanotechnology-based immunoassay platform commercially available. The company received an infusion of $7 million in series A financing in a round led by Neotribe Ventures with participation by Cota Capital, the Regents of the University of California and others.
When the first chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy, Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel), was approved in 2016 for treating B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, its developer, Novartis AG, confined the initial rollout to just 20 treating centers. Its label carried a black box warning, because of the risk of life-threatening cytokine release syndrome, and Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis put in place a comprehensive risk evaluation and mitigation system to ensure its safe use. Catamaran Bio Inc., a Boston-based startup that has raised $42 million in seed and series A financing, is considering the administration of similarly engineered natural killer cells in walk-in clinics. “If the product is safe, it can be given as an out-patient treatment,” Chief Scientific Officer Vipin Suri told BioWorld. “As a field, this absolutely has to be our ambition.”
HONG KONG – D3 Bio Inc. is the new kid on the biopharma block in Shanghai, kicking off with a $200 million series A financing backed by some of Asia’s most prominent venture capital firms.
DUBLIN – Synox Therapeutics Ltd., a spin-out from Celleron Therapeutics Ltd., has raised €37 million (US$43.7 million) in a series A round to conduct a pivotal trial of emactuzumab, an antibody its parent company in-licensed from Roche Holding AG in August.
DUBLIN – Health care investor Syncona Ltd. has founded a new startup, Purespring Therapeutics Ltd., to take gene therapy into the kidney. It is committing £45 million (US$59.6 million) in series A funding, which will support the build-out of the new company and take at least one program into the clinic.
Metagenomi Inc. has raised a $65 million series A financing to expand its gene editing abilities, advance its research and validate its pipeline in preclinical studies. The company’s CRISPR-based systems use algorithms for screening thousands of genomes from microorganisms to advance therapies for use in oncology, genetic diseases and possibly much more.
Though founded in 2018, Inipharm Inc. has just closed on a $35 million series A financing designed to push its lead program through an IND filing and into the clinic to treat liver-related diseases.
Be Biopharma Inc. is looking to develop engineered B cells to treat a wide range of diseases. The new category of cellular medicine is based on the work of David Rawlings and Richard James, researchers at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington.
Aavantibio Inc., with the help of a large check from Sarepta Therapeutics Inc., has launched with a $107 million series A to pursue gene therapies for treating rare genetic diseases. The lead program is in Friedreich’s ataxia (FA), a rare genetic disease that typically begins in childhood and causes progressive damage to the nervous system.
Dren Bio Inc. has closed on a $60 million series A to push its two lead programs through early clinical development. The company’s DR-01 is an antibody-based therapy for treating rare leukemias, lymphomas and specific phenotypes of autoimmune disorders. The company said it is initially targeting neglected hematology-oncology indications.
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