The first bispecific antibody to win regulatory approval, Removab (catumaxomab) was voluntarily withdrawn due to commercial reasons. Now Chinese biotech Lintonpharm Co. Ltd., of Guangzhou, said it plans to move catumaxomab to a global phase III trial following an IND approval from China’s NMPA, investigating the trifunctional bispecific antibody in patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis, a form of advanced gastric cancer.

PERTH, Australia – With a series A investment in hand, Glyscend Therapeutics Inc. will take its polymer therapeutic that mimics the effect of gastric bypass surgery to Australia next year to begin clinical trials.

Beta cell regeneration has been a holy grail for type 1 diabetes researchers for several decades. Despite some promising results in animal models, progress in patients has remained frustratingly elusive, however.

Whole genome sequencing is not part of treating patients in practice – or even involved in most clinical trials of drug candidates. But C2i Genomics Inc. is working to make that a reality. It applies pattern recognition to whole genome sequencing to create an individualized fingerprint for a given patient’s tumor. The New York-based startup has raised a $12 million series A round to back the development of its technology, which came out of Cornell and the New York Genome Center.

BEIJING – After his role as associate director and head of chemistry at Eli Lilly and Co., Brandeis-trained Jingye Zhou founded Eccogene Inc. in Shanghai in 2018 to focus on developing small-molecule drugs for metabolism and immune-related diseases.

BEIJING – After being a health care investor for 21 years, Jonathan Wang decided to co-found biotech startup Inmagene Biopharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. in July 2019 to seek success in the China market using the experience and insights he had accumulated over the years. With $20 million in its war chest so far, the startup aims to excel in immunology-related therapeutic areas in China.

Fountain Therapeutics Inc., a California company working to create treatments for age-related diseases, said Khosla Ventures has led a $6 million series A-1 financing of the startup, with participation from Nan Fung Life Sciences, which earlier contributed $5 million to the round.

LONDON – After announcing its $17.4 million series A funding in the midst of pandemic in April, Genespire Srl has now gone public on the preclinical research upon which its programs will be based, presenting the data at last week’s American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) annual meeting.

CEO and co-founder Rosana Kapeller told BioWorld that Rome Therapeutics Inc.’s $50 million series A will fund early work in an “exploding” new area of biology: the repeatome – “the dark genome” or “junk DNA,” as many previously deemed the roughly 60% of the human genome that consists of repetitive sequences of nucleic acids.