It took newly launched Plexium Inc. CEO Kandaswamy (Swamy) Vijayan a few years to figure out where he needed to focus his creative energies. With an engineering background, he helped develop diagnostic tools. But he wanted to take the skill further.

"Microbiome" has become a health and wellness buzzword, implicated as a contributing factor in conditions ranging from diabetes and obesity to gastrointestinal disease, autoimmune diseases and even autism. But the tools scientists use to cultivate bacteria have changed little over the past century, said Peter Christey, founder and CEO of San Carlos, Calif.-based startup General Automation Lab Technologies Inc. (GALT).

DUBLIN – Abalos Therapeutics GmbH raised €12 million (US$13.2 million) in series A funding to advance a distinctive approach to harnessing viruses for immuno-oncology applications.

LONDON – Mogrify Ltd. raised $16 million in the first close of a series A that it expects to at least double before closing the round in the next 12 months.

LONDON – Mirobio Ltd. has spun out of Oxford University, raising £27 million (US$33.3 million) to develop antibody-based therapies designed to activate immune checkpoint receptors in the treatment of autoimmune disorders.

Zielbio Inc., of Charlottesville, Va., closed on a $25.1 million series A financing to further its lead candidate, ZB-131, a humanized monoclonal antibody against cell surface plectin, which is expressed on the plasma membrane of ovarian, pancreatic, lung and colorectal cancer cells.

LONDON – Tacalyx GmbH has raised €7 million (US$7.7 million) in seed funding to initiate research on a new generation of antibodies targeted at tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs) expressed on a wide variety of tumor cells.

Versatope Therapeutics Inc., a company developing a universal influenza vaccine in Lowell, Mass., has been awarded a contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases worth up to $17.9 million over five years to support completion of a phase I study slated to wrap up in 2022.

BEIJING – Chinese startup Biotheus Inc., of Zhuhai, Guangdong, has its sights fixed on bispecific and multitarget antibodies to maximize drug efficacy. A biotech innovator based in the south of China, it gained support from local authorities that aim to create another biotech hub in the country.

LONDON - Oncolytic virus startup Theolytics Ltd. is looking to raise a series A round as it prepares to take its first product into phase I in the treatment of multiple myeloma.