Rather than focus on making one drug at a time, Creyon Bio Inc. is taking its more than $40 million in seed and series A financing to build its platform to understand the genetic roots of disease and then create precision medicines. Creyon is creating datasets to engineer RNA-based and single-stranded oligonucleotide-based medicines (OBMs) in addition to DNA and RNA editing systems. Those datasets are tailored to deliver models that create OBMs that are safe and effective for treating both common diseases and rare diseases.
Alopexx Inc. filed for an IPO that would bank as much as $17 million to continue the firm’s investigations of bacterial, fungal and parasitic infections that express the antigenic target poly N-acetyl glucosamine (PNAG).
Microbiotica Ltd. of Cambridge, U.K., has raised £50 million ($67 million) in series B funding as the company aims to test its microbiome-based technology in early cancer and ulcerative colitis trials. The funding was co-led by new investors Tencent and Flerie Invest, with British Patient Capital on board along with existing investors Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group and Seventure. With response rates to checkpoint inhibitors still very low, Microbiotica’s scientists think that the way to improve the immune system’s response to these drugs is by modifying the bacteria present in the gut.
To counter the worldwide growth of antimicrobial resistance, a subject of worldwide concern but little actual progress, Arrepath Inc. has raised a $20 million seed financing to advance its machine learning-based platform for discovering new classes of anti-infectives.
Biopharmas raising money in public or private financings, including: Aikido, Atlas Venture, Aytu, First Wave, Innoviva, Mediwound, Modulus Discovery, Oxurion.
LONDON – Epsilogen Ltd. has raised £30.8 million (US$41.5 million) in an oversubscribed series B, after its lead immunoglobulin E (IgE) program delivered positive results in a phase I in advanced solid tumors. The money is to fund a phase Ib trial of the product, Mov18 IgE – the first and only IgE antibody to have made it to the clinic – in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.
After two years of developing its platform, Vesalius Therapeutics Inc. now has $75 million in its pocket from Flagship Pioneering to understand and treat the diseases that account for 90% of the world’s illnesses. To resolve this massive amount of biological and industry complexity, Doug Cole, Vesalius’ chairman and co-founder and Flagship’s managing partner, noted the distinction between illness and disease. “Illness is what bothers you, it’s the experience of being sick and what the doctor might find when you’re examined,” Cole told BioWorld. “Disease is the mechanistic problem with the biology underlying the illness.”
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