CEO and co-founder Rosana Kapeller told BioWorld that Rome Therapeutics Inc.’s $50 million series A will fund early work in an “exploding” new area of biology: the repeatome – “the dark genome” or “junk DNA,” as many previously deemed the roughly 60% of the human genome that consists of repetitive sequences of nucleic acids.

I2O Therapeutics Inc., of Allston, Mass., raised $4 million in seed funding to further its work on oral formulations of therapies typically limited to injections, such as biologics, large molecules and peptide-based pharmaceuticals.

LONDON – Amphista Ltd. becomes the latest to join the growing band of proteolysis targeting chimera (Protac) specialists, arriving on the scene with a $7.5 million series A and what it says is a new approach to targeted protein degradation (TPD).

LONDON – A founding father of anti-angiogenesis therapy, Peter Carmeliet is turning his previous work on its head in new research which indicates that rather than destroying tumor vasculature, it should be piggy-backed as a means to recruit immune cells to a tumor.

Nineteengale Therapeutics is a new joint venture that was launched to fill a large void. Cyclica Inc., along with its partner, Neurotheryx Canada Ltd., both of Toronto, created Nineteengale to find and develop cannabinoid-inspired drugs for bipolar disorder, anxiety and pain management.

Lessons learned from development of hepatitis C therapies could be applied to the underserved hepatitis B population, potentially leading to a functional cure through a combination of optimized drugs that attack the virus from different angles. That is the mission of 2-year-old Aligos Therapeutics Inc., a South San Francisco-based startup focused on liver-related diseases.

Tony McKinney, the founder and CEO of Ethismos Research Inc., has worked with the small molecule he plans to take into the clinic this year for the past 10 years. All the while he’s used the same support group of personnel to develop the molecule. Sometimes that group works and sometimes it’s on hiatus.

Palvella Therapeutics Inc. has completed enrollment of its phase II/III trial for treating adults with pachyonychia congenita, a rare disease that eventually leads patients to a life of chronic pain and severe problems with walking.

HONG KONG – MBD Co. Ltd. and Azothbio Inc., both based in South Korea, have entered an agreement for rare cancer drug development using an AI-powered drug discovery platform.