Integrated Biosciences Inc., an early-stage startup that is combining synthetic biology and machine learning in the hunt for drugs that tackle cell senescence, has demonstrated its capabilities in a newly published study in Nature Aging on May 4, 2023, which employed artificial intelligence (AI) to identify three novel compounds that are highly selective for Bcl-2 and that exhibit favorable medicinal chemistry profiles.
Orbital Therapeutics Inc. raised $270 million in a series A round to fund a big push into the next generation of mRNA-based therapies. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm is building out a comprehensive RNA platform from which it will launch programs in oncology, autoimmune disease and indications involving protein replacement approaches.
Dupuytren’s disease is often referred to as “the most common crippling hand condition that people have never heard of,” but Kurt Harrington is on a mission to change that. A seasoned biotech and pharma consultant, Harrington has had the condition himself for over a decade and, acutely aware of the lack of available treatment options, has founded Ventoux Biosciences Inc. to bring additional therapies forward.
Swiss biotech firms raised CHF1.3 billion (US$1.5 billion) in equity and debt financing in 2022, a fall of 60% from the previous year’s total of over CHF3.3 billion. But it’s still ahead of historic pre-pandemic levels of funding.
Abdera Therapeutics Inc. emerged from stealth mode with $142 million in equity funding and plans to develop a pipeline of radiopharmaceutical drugs that will employ engineered heavy-chain-only antibody domains as targeting agents. It has already identified a lead, which targets delta-like ligand 3, a Notch pathway protein, which is overexpressed in about 80% of small-cell lung cancer cases, but which is absent from healthy tissue. A manufacturing campaign is now underway, and an IND submission is in the offing.
Tubulis GmbH is banking $22.75 million up front and could earn more than $1 billion in development, regulatory and commercial milestones from an alliance with Bristol Myers Squibb Co. focused on the design and development of antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumor applications. It would also receive tiered royalties on the sales of any products that emerge from the pact.
A research initiative led by Jennifer Doudna and Jill Banfield of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, has landed $70 million in funding from the Audacious Project to bring the power and precision of CRISPR-based genome editing to the gut microbiome of humans and animals, in an ambitious effort to engineer complex microbial communities to achieve outcomes that can benefit human health and the environment.
Complement Therapeutics GmbH raised €72 million (US$79.4 million) in a series A round to move into the clinic a novel gene therapy for treating geographic atrophy secondary to dry age-related macular degeneration. It’s the largest series A round completed in Europe so far this year.
For European biotech, the first quarter (Q1) of 2023 could hardly be described as the best of times – but the period did not represent the worst of times either. European firms engaged in drug discovery and development collectively raised $1.88 billion during this period. The tally is 4% less than the total raised in the comparable period last year, and it represents just 32% of the total raised during the COVID-19-fueled biotech boom during 2021. But it’s still the third highest Q1 raise during the last six years.
