Allrock Bio Inc. secured $50 million in a series A round co-led by Versant Ventures and Westlake Biopartners to advance ROC-101, an oral pan-rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) inhibitor to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension and pulmonary hypertension with interstitial lung disease.

Braveheart Bio Inc. is paying $65 million up front to license Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd.’s oral hypertrophic cardiomyopathy drug candidate called HRS-1893.

A few years after it was founded with the aim of taking RNA therapies to the next level, Arnatar Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth, disclosing a $52 million series A round raised in 2024 as well as U.S. FDA orphan and rare pediatric disease designations for ART-4, an antisense oligonucleotide candidate targeting the root cause of Alagille syndrome.

Partly focused on delivery challenges that have limited the reach of RNA medicines, new biotech company Axelyf Inc. closed a $2.6 million seed round to support development of its AXL technology and to advance lead autoimmune candidate AXL-003.

Quoted technology commercialization company Puretech Health plc is scouting for third parties to fund phase III development of deupirfenidone, after spinning the respiratory drug into a new startup, Celea Therapeutics.

Singapore-based Immortal Dragons has launched with $40 million under management, mostly from its founder Boyang Wang, with a focus on investing in early stage companies developing treatments to extend life.

“Our mission is to apply our protein-protein interaction (PPI) big data-generation platform to create novel antibody therapeutics,” Proteina Co. Ltd. CEO Yoon Tae-young recently told BioWorld. “We have been working to build a proprietary technology platform for more than 15 years,” Yoon said, “and we take pride in the fact that we made our own technology platform, instead of running a company based on licensed-in technology.”

Aussie gene therapy company Mirugen Pty Ltd. has emerged from stealth mode from the Center for Eye Research Australia in Melbourne, toting a AU$4.5 million (US$2.9 million) seed round that will see it optimize its lead candidate to treat retinitis pigmentosa.

Elysium Therapeutics Inc. aims to tackle the problem of opioid overdose with a longer-lasting rescue agent that gets around the not-much-publicized problem of fentanyl rebound, or re-narcotization, which happens when the standard reverser wears off and the culprit drug stays active in the body, potentially killing the patient.