LONDON – Advent Life Sciences announced the close of two new transatlantic funds with a total of $215 million, to be dedicated to seed and series A funding of early stage science. The first fund is Advent’s own Life Sciences fund III, while the second is the Advent-Harrington Impact fund, which London-based Advent has raised, and will manage, on behalf of the Harrington Discovery Institute of Cleveland.
Excision Biotherapeutics Inc.’s CEO is specific when he talks about his company’s therapies and what they may achieve: a functional cure. “When you treat someone and they become cancer free, you can’t use the world ‘cured’ because the cancer may come back decades later,” Daniel Dornbusch told BioWorld. “But you can talk about a functional cure, meaning the cancer didn’t come back for a very long time. It’s functionally cured for maybe 10, 20 or 30 years."
Francesco de Rubertis, a co-founder of Medicixi Ventures, has unveiled the next generation of the venture-backed asset-centric biopharma model with the creation of Centessa Pharmaceuticals Ltd. The new company was created by acquiring, in all-share transactions, total control of 10 companies from the Medicxi portfolio.
Sagimet Biosciences Inc., a company developing an oral fatty acid synthase (FASN) inhibitor for the potential treatment of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, has raised $80 million in a crossover financing led by an undisclosed public equity health care investment fund.
As it waits on initial data from its two lead programs, in sensorineural hearing loss and multiple sclerosis, Pipeline Therapeutics Inc. raised $80 million in a series C crossover round to progress its pipeline of small-molecule drugs for neuroregeneration and to position it for a potential IPO.
Ensoma Inc., a gene therapy startup working to drastically simplify the production and delivery of genomic medicines, announced itself Feb. 11 with a $70 million series A financing plus a strategic collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., which licensed vectors from the company for up to five rare disease targets in a deal that could deliver as much as $1.25 billion in potential payouts. Ensoma's co-founder and seed investor, 5AM Ventures, led the financing. Takeda took a $10 million equity stake as part of the round.
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