From 20 years of research on metabolic change as a result of salt intake, Karen Duggan discovered in 2003 that a naturally occurring molecule in the human body, native vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), was capable of reversing fibrosis caused by hypertension and other chronic diseases such as diabetes. From that discovery, Vectus Biosystems Ltd. was founded, and the company has developed a new class of mimetic drug candidates and a drug library based on VIP.

Profoundbio Inc. closed a $70 million series A financing round that will see it advance its two lead antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) programs to the clinic. The Suzhou, China, and Woodinville, Wash.-based company has raised a total of more than $138 million in the past two years.

A U.K. biotech is aiming to build a new pipeline around a unique drug delivery system employing a naturally occurring protein called a “nanosyringe” to overcome the technical challenges of delivering therapeutic payloads to target cells. Nanosyrinx Ltd., of Warwick, based its technology on a naturally occurring bacterial toxin mechanism, which produces tiny virus-like particles. The synthetic biology approach has allowed the company to tweak the cellular machinery of bacteria to produce these nanosyringes loaded with drugs.

Flagship Pioneering-backed Profound Therapeutics Inc. made its debut with $75 million from its originator to support ongoing efforts with the Profoundry platform, which the company said has led to the discovery of tens of thousands of novel proteins as part of an ambitious plan for “remapping the landscape of the human genome.”

Now is a good time to be involved with type 1 diabetes (T1D) research, according to a U.K. biotech that hopes to reduce or cut the need for insulin injections to treat the condition.

Inceptor Bio LLC, a company developing cell therapies for difficult-to-treat cancers, has closed a $37 million series A financing led by Kineticos Ventures, the second fund founded by Inceptor CEO Shailesh Maingi. Altogether, about 40 investors have supported the company's efforts, he told BioWorld. Proceeds from the round, which follows a $26 million seed financing in 2021, will support moving Inceptor's lead CAR T program into phase I testing, a move targeted for the second half of 2023, and continued development of rare CAR-macrophage and CAR-natural killer cell programs.

Although gene therapy is now “a clinical reality,” it still remains an early stage therapeutic modality. That’s the view of Caroline Man Xu, CEO and co-founder of Vigeneron GmbH, a German gene therapy company that has maintained a low profile while steadily staking out a promising position in gene therapies for inherited retinal disease.

Nuvig Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth mode with a $47 million series A round to back efforts to develop drugs that induce immune homeostasis as a way of treating autoimmune diseases without disturbing the system’s normal function.

Engimmune Therapeutics AG has raised CHF15.5 million (US$16.7 million) in a seed round, as it prepares to address efficacy and safety shortcomings that currently constrain T-cell receptor and soluble TCR cancer therapies. The Basel, Switzerland-based company’s technology brings together genome editing, functional screening, deep mutational sequencing and machine learning, to engineer synthetic T-cell receptors that are highly specific to a chosen tumor antigen, increasing affinity and safety and avoiding off-target effects.

After raising $17 million in seed funding, immunotherapy-focused biotech company, LTZ Therapeutics Inc., is announcing plans for the fledgling company whose acronym stands for “Lift to Zenith.” CEO and co-founder Robert Li told BioWorld that the company’s three-tiered immunotherapy platform will focus on reducing immunosuppression, reprogramming innate immunity and modulating adaptive immunity.