Aurion Biotech Inc. pulled down a $120 million financing to advance efforts with its lead candidate, a cell therapy for the treatment of corneal edema secondary to endothelial dysfunction (CESED).

Pangea Biomed Ltd. picked up $7 million in seed financing to fast-track development of its multicancer, multitherapy response predictor Enlight. The platform combines machine learning and RNA sequencing to map tumor molecular signatures and predict how different cancer types will respond to oncology drugs. Pangea said instead of using transcriptomic data, it is utilizing ‘unsupervised’ AI techniques that harvest information about gene interactions.

After an eight-year academic collaboration with Glaxosmithkline plc, Kynos Therapeutics Ltd. has spun out of Edinburgh University with a £9 million (US$11.7 million) financing and a phase I-ready program. The company specializes in kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO), a mitochondrial outer membrane protein that is a critical gatekeeper in the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism, and which regulates inflammation and immunity.

Back in 2015, a black box warning from the U.S. FDA about the cardiovascular risks of testosterone therapy products caused a major upheaval in the market.

Ninnion LLC, a startup developing psychedelic medicines focused on brain injury, chronic pain, inflammation and addiction disorders, has formed a new scientific board (SAB) that Chief Development Officer Bill Massey said will ”be a tremendous asset in navigating the uncharted waters of psychedelic drug development."

After securing $70 million in series B funding, Chinese biotech Medilink Therapeutics Co. Ltd. is gearing up to enter the clinic with its next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs).

Moonlake Therapeutics AG is making headway on its mission to establish a broad dermatology and rheumatology franchise around its sole product, sonelokimab, announcing it is poised to start a phase II study in hidradenitis suppurativa.

Biotechs that tackle the effects of aging are beginning to make headlines: in January Altos Labs Inc. launched with a reported investment from Jeff Bezos. With Bezos getting involved with San Francisco-based Altos, the immediate reaction was that anti-aging biotechs would be there for the benefit of billionaires searching for eternal life. Not so, according to London U.K.-based Genflow Biosciences plc, which hopes to show that fighting aging is really about improving health as people age.

By combining an activator of the pro-apoptotic protein Bax with an inhibitor of the anti-apoptotic protein BCL-XL, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have been able to overcome resistance to apoptosis in both a wide range of cell lines and animal studies. The team reported its findings in the March 7, 2022, issue of Nature Communications.