Boston-based Nirogy Therapeutics Inc.’s $16.5 million series A round is meant to enable a pipeline of small-molecule drugs targeting the solute carrier family of transporter proteins (SLCTs) embedded in the cell membrane, and let the firm bring its front oncology runner to the clinic in 2022.

Newly launched Inzen Therapeutics Inc. is wrestling with cell loss and what information those cells impart as they die. The premise, that cells leave a legacy to living cells, is at the heart of the company as it works to find and develop therapies based on its Thanokine Biology, which the company said could be used for preventing and treating cancer, fibrotic disorders, immune-inflammatory disorders, metabolic disorders and degenerative diseases.

San Diego area startup Endeavor Biomedicines Inc. launched in January 2021, with a $62 million series A financing from Omega Funds, Longitude Capital and its own management team. The company is working on one asset, ENV-101 or taladegib, a small-molecule inhibitor targeting the Hedgehog pathway, which it plans to develop for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

Preclinical startup Tavotek Biotherapeutics Ltd., with operations in Pennsylvania and Suzhou, China, boasts two technology platforms for discovering and developing molecular-targeted biologics for cancers and autoimmune diseases and is working to push its candidates, including a bispecific antibody, to the clinic next year.

DUBLIN – Noema Pharma AG closed a €54 million (US$59.8 million) series A round to take forward four clinical-stage assets it has in-licensed from Roche Holding AG. The drug candidates are being lined up for orphan neurological indications that fall outside of Roche’s strategic focus.

LONDON – Myricx Pharma Ltd. has launched with £4.5 million (US$5.9 million) seed funding to advance a new approach to targeting Myc, an oncogene that has defied long years of effort to drug it. The company will take a synthetic lethal approach, developing small-molecule inhibitors of N-myristoyltransferase to perturb pathways that Myc drives, causing cancer cell death.

Janpix Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., has raised a $10 million series B designed to progress its monovalent small-molecule protein degraders of STAT3 and STAT5 into final preclinical studies and eventually into the clinic to treat various hematological and solid tumor cancers.

In the past 10 years, the advances in understanding the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases have been dramatic. “The development of novel biomarkers and other tools as well are key in aiding diagnostic potential and the ability to track disease progression have been phenomenal,” Isaac Veinbergs, CEO of newly created Libra Therapeutics Inc., told BioWorld.

PERTH, Australia – Sydney-based Chimeric Therapeutics Ltd. has acquired exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize the City of Hope Cancer Center’s chlorotoxin chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy that uses a peptide derived from scorpion toxin to direct T cells to target glioblastoma.