Stuart Therapeutics Inc., a company developing peptide therapeutics for ophthalmic disease, has completed an $11 million series A financing led by Infocus Capital Partners, an ophthalmology-focused life sciences venture capital fund, with significant participation by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Mimo Capital and Biobrit.

OS Therapies LLC, the developer of a listeria-based cancer vaccine to prevent metastasis and increase overall survival in young people with osteosarcoma, has closed on a $6 million series A financing led by Noble Capital Markets and Tichenor Ventures. The funds will help the company advance its lead candidate, OST-HER2, into a phase IIb trial this year with hopes of a potential FDA filing by in 2022.

In science there are often too many choices to make. Nammi Therapeutics Inc.’s CEO, David Stover, told BioWorld that he makes narrowing therapeutic options a core company principle. The redundancy of immune regulatory pathways in cancer treatments is a case in point.

Xenter Inc. has officially launched, positioning itself as the first startup device/data/drug med-tech company. The company is developing wireless solutions for interventional cardiology, interventional radiology and neurointerventional radiology.

Shoreline Biosciences Inc., a San Diego-based company developing allogenic natural killer and macrophage cellular therapies for cancer and other diseases, has raised $43 million in a financing led by Boxer Capital.

It’s a first for Larry Miller. In his 30 years of working in pharma, he has never run a company that didn’t have a pack of near competitors scrambling to develop a therapy. “Not even close,” he told BioWorld. Miller, the CEO of Apnimed Inc., just saw the company close on a $25 million series B to help drive its lead program, a once-daily, oral obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) therapy, into a phase III registrational trial.

Zenas Biopharma LLC launched on March 23 as a U.S. funded cross-border biotech company targeting autoimmune diseases in China. The company, headquartered in Miromar Lakes, Fla., is founded and funded by Tellus Bioventures LLC and Fairmount Funds Management LLC.

Eliem Therapeutics Inc. is old-fashioned in the useful ways. The company is going after extremely large indications, including chronic pain and major depression. “We’re really passionate about these large markets,” Eliem President and CEO Bob Azelby told BioWorld. “These patients live in the shadows… There’s so many people suffering.”

Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have used a gene therapy approach to treat pain by specifically suppressing the Nav 1.7 ion channel in the spinal cord, both preventing and reversing pain in several animal models with distinct underlying reasons for pain.

Bionaut Labs emerged from five years in stealth mode raising $20 million to develop Bionauts, microrobots designed to deliver therapies to treat brain disorders. The financing will support the company’s therapeutic program in glioma through preclinical development and further research and development in Huntington’s disease.