The tech sector's high profile march into life sciences, from Alphabet Inc.'s Verily to IBM Corp.'s Watson, hasn't always been smooth. Successes, such as Exscientia Ltd. and Benevolentai Ltd., have almost universally emerged from within the biopharma sector rather than without. Now Palantir Technologies Inc., a data analysis specialist known best for its counterterrorism and defense work, is looking to bridge the gap with an artificial intelligence platform it is billing as an "operating system" for health care and other companies.
Building on a deal first struck in 2019, artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Exscientia Ltd. has agreed to take responsibility for a multitarget drug discovery collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb Co. that could be worth more than $1.2 billion in all. The expanded collaboration, first established with BMS-acquired Celgene Corp., includes $50 million in up-front funding, up to $125 million in near to mid-term potential milestones, plus additional clinical, regulatory and commercial payments. It remains focused on small-molecule drug candidates in areas including oncology and immunology.
Less than a year after Novartis AG's acquisition of optogenetics specialist Vedere Bio Inc., its successor Vedere Bio II Inc. is launching with $77 million in series A financing, led by Octagon Capital. The company will develop earlier-stage assets than those Novartis purchased, including new, mutation-agnostic optogenetics technology to improve upon current gene therapies aimed at restoring functional vision to people with vision loss due to photoreceptor death.
Soteria Biotherapeutics Inc., a company developing switchable bispecific T-cell engagers to treat patients with solid tumors, has raised $42 million in series A financing to fund early development of a pipeline of candidates with potential in validated cancer targets, it said. Roche Venture Fund and 5AM Ventures led the round, with further investments from M Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund and Alexandria Venture Investments.
Biopharma startups seeking a mix of financial, strategic and operational support gained a new option May 12 with the announcement of Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Fund II from Perceptive Advisors LLC. The fund, expected to lead series A financings in the range of $20 million to $40 million closed with $515 million in capital commitments. It's led by portfolio manager and CEO Chris Garabedian, who also serves as chairman and CEO of Xontogeny LLC, a Boston-based accelerator.
As expected, the FDA has expanded emergency use authorization (EUA) for Pfizer Inc. and Biontech SE’s COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty (tozinameran), to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age, marking what Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock called "a significant step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic."
Flagship Pioneering, the company-creating venture fund that launched Moderna Inc. in 2012, is betting $50 million on a new twist in RNA-focused development at Laronde Inc. Leveraging its explorations of the therapeutic applicability of long non-coding RNA, Flagship CEO Noubar Afeyan said the company has created Endless RNA (eRNA), "a new class of medicines that can be programmed to persistently express therapeutic proteins in the body, at tunable levels."
Amid what Moderna Inc. called "overwhelming" demand from global governments for mRNA vaccines and boosters with efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, the company said both its authorized vaccine, mRNA-1273, and a strain-matched candidate, mRNA-1273.351, increased neutralizing titers against the variants.
Eikon Therapeutics Inc., a startup leveraging advanced optics and machine learning to track protein dynamics for drug discovery, has closed a $148 million series A financing. Led by a high-profile CEO, former Merck & Co. Inc. R&D chief Roger Perlmutter, and with the counsel of two Nobel prize winners, its team is working to "expand the druggable proteome by targeting protein dynamics directly."
Shares of Biolinerx Ltd. (NASDAQ:BLRX) shot up 53% to $4.88 May 4 on news that adding its lead candidate, motixafortide, to standard of care G-CSF for hematopoietic stem cell mobilization helped achieve significantly better mobilization than G-CSF alone in a phase III trial. The company said it's working "aggressively" to gain regulatory approval to market the drug for use in autologous bone marrow transplants for multiple myeloma (MM) patients, with plans to make an NDA submission in the first half of 2022.
