When the COVID-19 pandemic effectively shut down travel and conferences starting in the first part of 2020, the general lament was that the lack of face-to-face interaction would hamper biopharma companies’ ability to secure deals and investments. Instead, the opposite happened. Now, coming off two years of record-breaking financing, the biopharma sector is facing an inevitable correction, though a handful of venture capital panelists suggested there’s room for optimism.
Rgenta Therapeutics Inc.’s $52 million in a series A money will let the RNA-focused firm pursue its small-molecule drug efforts “for the next two or three years,” as candidates in cancer and neurology make their ways toward the clinic, said co-founder and CEO Simon Xi. “We’ll go where the science leads us,” he told BioWorld, adding that the cash on hand is sufficient to complete a phase I study.
Cajal Neuroscience Inc., a startup seeking new targets to use in medicines for neurodegeneration, has launched with the completion of a $96 million series A financing led by The Column Group and Lux Capital. The company, inspired by the pioneering work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, is focused on the "mechanistic, spatial and temporal complexity of neurodegeneration" to determine "how, where and when different mechanisms contribute to disease."
Catalym GmbH raised €50 million (US$51.3 million) in a series C round to expand and accelerate phase IIa development of visugromab (CTL-002), a first-in-class growth differentiation factor 15 inhibitor, across a range of solid tumor indications.