Gene therapy’s one-and-done mindset proved “a boon and a bane,” said Avak Kahvejian, general partner at Flagship Pioneering. “You have one shot to get it right, is what that really means,” and his firm founded Ring Therapeutics Inc. to design redosable drugs in the space.

Hongyun Biotech Co. Ltd. raised ¥100 million (US$15.5 million) in a series B round to move its new generation EGFR inhibitor, RC-01, to the IND stage in China and the U.S. for non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). The plan is to finish the IND filing by the end of this year and start the trial in 2022.

DUBLIN – Anocca AB raised $47 million in a series B round to advance its T-cell-based immunotherapies expressing recombinant T-cell receptors (TCRs) toward clinical trials in cancer and to build out its manufacturing capacity at its base in Södertälje, Sweden.

DUBLIN – Coave Therapeutics unveiled a new identity and a new gene therapy platform, as it closed a €21.2 million (US$25 million) extension to its long-running series B round, which takes the total raise to €33 million.

Private biopharma investment in 2021 continues to outpace that of the past two years as two gene therapy companies, Shape Therapeutics Inc. and Kriya Therapeutics Inc., posted series B financings this week totaling more than $200 million.

Prime Medicine Inc. (PM) likely has “a lock on prime editing technology for therapeutic uses,” CEO Keith Gottesdiener told BioWorld, though research labs are continuing to refine the approach. Cambridge, Mass.-based PM has $315 million in the bank that will help advance the platform, which behaves like a DNA word processor to search and replace disease-causing genetic sequences at their exact location in the genome.

Osso VR has raised $27 million in a series B financing led by GSR Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate expansion of its library and virtual reality (VR)-powered surgical training and assessment platform.

Tioga Medical Inc. closed a $30 million series B financing led by The Capital Partnership (TCP), with participation from Cormorant Asset Management, Amed Ventures and Shifamed angel investors. The financing will be used to advance product development, support preclinical testing, and initiate clinical experience for the company's transcatheter mitral valve replacement technology.

LONDON – Nerre Therapeutics Ltd. will have another go at delivering proof of efficacy for its chronic cough treatment, after raising £20 million (US$27.6 million) in a series B2 round.

Looking to allow customers to directly purchase its diagnostics system that runs a full panel of blood tests, Babson Diagnostics Inc. raised $31 million in new series B financing. The proceeds will be used to scale the Austin, Texas-based company to bring its finger-prick blood microsampling system to retail locations across the country.