Loqus23 Therapeutics Ltd. has raised £35 million (US$46.6 million) in a series A to take forward small molecules it has discovered for the treatment of Huntington’s disease and other conditions that are driven by DNA mismatch repair (MMR). MMR fixes DNA insertions, deletions and misincorporation errors that occur during transcription and/or cellular replication. Smaller repairs are directed by MutSalpha, a protein that binds single base mismatches, while MutSbeta handles larger insertion/deletion loops. Huntington’s and other triplet repeat diseases are caused when trinucleotide repeats accumulate in somatic DNA to the extent that they interfere with protein expression.

Owkin Inc. partnered with Astrazeneca plc to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool to pre-screen for germline BRCA mutations (gBRCAm) in breast cancer directly from digitized pathology slides. The companies hope that the gBRCA pre-screening solution will not only transform patients’ lives but bring value to health care systems.

Tokyo-based Olympus Corp. launched a new video imaging platform called Visera S (OTV-S500) in Europe and select Asian countries September 2024 while advancing more rollouts for the product worldwide.

Spanish VC firm Asabys Partners has closed its second fund at €180 million (US$201.3 million), to be invested in seed to series B rounds in 12 to 15 biotech, med-tech and digital health companies.

Venture Capital firm Asabys Partners closed its second fund, Sabadell Asabys Health Innovation Investments II, with total commitments of €180 million ($200 million). The funds will go towards 12 to 15 companies developing health care solutions across the medical device, digital health and biopharma fields.

Spanish VC firm Asabys Partners has closed its second fund at €180 million (US$201.3 million), to be invested in seed to series B rounds in 12 to 15 biotech, med-tech and digital health companies.

A collaborating team of researchers from the U.K.’s University College London and the Incliva Biomedical Research Institute in Valencia, Spain, filed for protection of a machine learning model called AMMON-OHE to predict occurrence of overt hepatic encephalopathy in patients with cirrhosis of the liver.

At the 2024 European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress, researchers have presented work that could lead to ways to boost brain development and prevent neurodegeneration in individuals with Down syndrome.

In one of the largest private rounds raised by an Italian biotech, Genespire Srl has closed a €46.6 million (US$51.88 million) series B, enabling it to lay the ground for a phase I/II clinical trial of its lead program, Gene-202, and to further develop its proprietary lentiviral vectors. The vectors are designed to be applicable to a range of liver-related metabolic disorders and, as its first indication, the company intends to treat methylmalonic acidemia, a serious genetic condition that results in impaired metabolism of certain amino acids and lipids.