Confo Therapeutics NV is banking an up-front payment of $40 million from a licensing deal with Eli Lilly and Co. involving its lead asset, CFTX-1554, an oral inhibitor of the angiotensin II type 2 receptor, which is in phase I development for neuropathic pain. The deal includes up to $590 million more in potential milestones and tiered sales royalties. Ghent, Belgium-based Confo could also secure a further $590 million in additional milestones should Indianapolis-based Lilly elect to take forward an antibody-based inhibitor directed against the same target.
Chroma Medicine Inc. closed a $135 million series B round as momentum builds at one of the early movers in the emerging field of epigenetic editing. It’s little more a year since Cambridge, Mass.-based Chroma emerged from stealth by disclosing a $125 million series A round and a stellar line-up of company founders. “It’s not all that long ago, but we have made a huge amount of progress,” CEO Catherine Stehman-Breen told BioWorld.
For Aqemia SA, the year got off to a good start, as one of its pharma partners, Les Laboratoires Servier SAS, extended an existing collaboration to drug a supposedly undruggable immuno-oncology target, using its Launchpad artificial intelligence platform.
Resalis Therapeutics Srl closed a €10 million (US$10.6 million) seed round to progress toward the clinic a micro-RNA (miR) inhibitor in development for metabolic disease indications. Riccardo Panella, chief scientific officer and founder, identified the potential of a particular miR species, miR-22, as a target for metabolic syndrome while conducting studies on its potential role in oncology while at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
A slew of biosimilar versions of TNF-alpha inhibitor adalimumab will finally arrive on the U.S. market in 2023, almost seven years after the first such molecule, Amgen Inc.’s Amjevita (adalimumab-atto) gained U.S. FDA approval. Amgen commercially launched its product on Jan. 31. Seven more are lined up for launch over the summer, while two more are undergoing regulatory review. Their long-anticipated arrival will mark the beginning of the end for one of the most lucrative franchises in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. It represents, according to Cardinal Health Inc.’s newly published 2023 Biosimilars Report, “the largest loss of exclusivity event, perhaps ever in the U.S.”
Hemab Therapeutics ApS raised $135 million in a series B funding round to continue its broad effort to build a company focused on developing prophylactic therapies for neglected bleeding and thrombotic disorders. The new cash brings its total equity raise to $190 million.
A preclinical data presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium later this week has prompted Halda Therapeutics Inc. to emerge from stealth and unveil its novel Riptac (Regulated Induced Proximity Targeting Chimera) platform for creating heterobifunctional small molecules designed to kill cancer cells selectively. The New Haven, Conn.-based company has been quietly refining the technology since its formation in 2019 and has already secured $76 million in series A and B rounds.
TVM Capital Life Science has invested $25 million in Lamab Biologics Inc., which is taking forward a new twist on an old story in tackling allergic conditions. The asset-centric virtual company is developing a novel monoclonal antibody directed at immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies, which are responsible for mediating allergic responses.
With readouts from three clinical studies of its lead oncolytic virus Tilt-123 due later this year, Tilt Biotherapeutics Ltd. secured €12 million (US$12.9 million) in new funding, to add to the €10 million it raised last June. That will enable the company to complete the ongoing studies, to prepare for a phase II in ovarian cancer, its lead indication, and to take forward several preclinical programs that are nearing the clinic.
Turbine Ltd. began the new year with a partnership with Cancer Research Horizons, the innovation arm of Cancer Research UK, which will put its Simulatedcell computational biology platform to work on the vexed question of how best to position CDC7 inhibitors in cancer.
