With $50 million in hand from Flagship Pioneering, Abiologics Inc. is pairing generative artificial intelligence with high-throughput chemical protein synthesis to attack oncology and immunology indications with Synteins, synthetic proteins that represent a new class of programmable medicines. Avak Kahvejian, co-founder and CEO of Abiologics and general partner at Flagship, told BioWorld that Abiologics stands “at the precipice of a completely new modality.”

In one of the largest venture rounds for biopharma in 2024, Cardurion Pharmaceuticals Inc. closed a $260 million series B financing, with funds slated to advance and expand its pipeline for potentially first-in-class drugs targeting cardiovascular disease, including two programs in phase II development.

India’s first indigenous CAR T therapy is selling at around $50,000 per shot, nearly one-tenth of the price of top-selling CAR Ts in the U.S., and Immunoact founder and CEO Rahul Purwar told BioWorld he anticipates bringing the price down to as low as $20,000 per shot.

AI-driven clinical trial design company Opyl Ltd. formed a partnership with L39 Capital Pty Ltd. to establish a $100 million biotech fund that will showcase the predictive power of Opyl’s Trialkey software in selecting successful biotech and pharmaceutical stocks. Melbourne, Australia-based Opyl leverages AI to elevate clinical trial design and forecast outcomes, empowering clinical researchers, biopharma companies and investors to enhance trial design, drug development and market delivery.

New company Pan Cancer T BV is preparing for a clinical trial of a next-generation T-cell receptor-engineered T cell it has designed to remove the current barriers and make T-cell therapies effective in treating solid tumors. Its products have two distinguishing features: They are targeted at antigens the company has shown are exclusively and robustly expressed by multiple solid cancers, and have a minor genetic modification that enhances the durability of autologous TCR-Ts in the tumor microenvironment after they are administered back into a patient.

On the heels of positive phase II results of its extended-release ketamine (R-107) in treatment-resistant depression, Douglas Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is gearing up to begin phase III trials of its ketamine treatment that is safe enough to take at home without clinical supervision.

Exsilio Therapeutics emerged from stealth mode on June 25, 2024, with $82 million from a series A financing that was co-led by Novartis Venture Fund and Delos Capital. The company plans to use naturally occurring, mobile genetic elements to integrate therapeutic genes at a defined location in the genome, making it safer than random integration, which can cause tumor formation.

Newco Yellowstone Biosciences Ltd. has been formed to develop soluble bispecific T-cell receptors against a novel class of tumor-specific antigens it has discovered in leukemia patients who were cured by a donor stem cell transplant. The company has proprietary access to a biobank of over 10,000 samples from more than 3,000 acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. A small number of these patients were cured by an allogeneic bone marrow transplant, whilst unusually, having no sign of graft-vs.-host disease.

Fledgling biotech Ternarx Pty Ltd. has emerged from stealth mode and is the first of its kind in Australia to develop targeted protein degrader technology to destroy disease-causing proteins that cannot be targeted by conventional drugs. The Melbourne-based company will initially develop targeted protein degraders against currently undrugged transcription factors in cancers with significant unmet need, starting with neuroblastoma and prostate cancer.

Marea Therapeutics came out of stealth mode on June 18, after raising a combined $190 million through its series A and B financings. The series A round was led by Third Rock Ventures, and the series B round was led by Sofinnova Investments and co-led by Forbion, Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Fund and Venbio.