Qihan Biotechology Co. Ltd., a company known for its multiplexable genome editing technology, has yet again extended its series A financing, this time with a $67 million round that will support advancement of its allogeneic cell therapy candidates to IND in China. To date the company has raised more than $100 million.
DUBLIN – Last May, a quartet of Dutch biotech industry veterans gathered for a socially distanced outdoor meeting in a private garden in Leiden to discuss what could be done to prevent the present COVID-19 fiasco from ever occurring on such a scale again. A new startup, Leyden Laboratories BV, emerged from that conversation, and it has just raised €40 million (US$47.3 million) in a series A round to develop broad-spectrum, self-administered, intranasal antiviral drugs to prevent infection.
Asher Biotherapeutics Inc. raised $55 million in a series A financing round to take forward a series of engineered cytokines designed to selectively activate T cells or other immune effector cells, in order to eliminate both the toxicities and the loss of efficacy that can result from indiscriminate activation.
Aktis Oncology Inc. raised $72 million in a series A round and set out its stall as another contender with big ambitions in the rapidly developing field of targeted radiopharmaceuticals for solid tumor indications.
LONDON – Exevir Bio NV added a further €15 million (US$17.9 million) to close its series A round at €42 million, providing the means to take its nanobody therapy for treating COVID-19 infection through to registration.
Little more than two months after cutting a deal with Merck & Co. Inc. that could top $1 billion, Janux Therapeutics Inc. has closed on a $56 million series A. Janux is developing immunotherapies designed to trigger the immune system to kill specific tumors while leaving the healthy tissue safely alone. T-cell engagers bind to a tumor cell and use the patient’s T cells to eliminate the tumor.
PARIS – Less than a year after its formation, Acusurgical SAS, has secured a $7 million series A round to develop its robotic platform for assisting surgeons performing microsurgery procedures in retinal surgery. “Our goal isn’t to replace the surgeon but to increase his surgical capacities. Our mission is to create an augmented surgeon,” Christoph Spuhler, CEO and co-founder of Montpellier, France-based Acusurgical, told BioWorld.
Jaguar Gene Therapy LLC, a startup reuniting former Avexis Inc. executives to develop a portfolio of potential treatments for severe genetic diseases, announced its public debut Feb. 25 with more than $40 million in series A financing from co-creator Deerfield Management.
RNA has “huge potential” as a therapeutic modality and is beginning to deliver on that potential. But “manufacturing RNA has issues in production, delivery and performance,” Thomas Barnes told BioWorld. Barnes is the CEO of startup Orna Therapeutics LLC, which has the goal of addressing those issues with oRNA, an engineered form of circular RNA.
Blue Ocean Spine GmbH has won a major investment from SHS GmbH, also from Tuttlingen in Germany, to develop its next-generation functional spinal implant. The two companies are declining to disclose the size of the series A investment.
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