Nearly a year after Prometheus Biosciences Inc. sold for $10.8 billion to Merck & Co. Inc., its former CEO, Mark McKenna, is back in the game with Mirador Therapeutics Inc. Many of his former Prometheus colleagues have joined McKenna. Getting the band back together, McKenna told BioWorld, “is the ultimate compliment.” Mirador just launched with more than $400 million to develop therapies for treating immune-mediated inflammatory and fibrotic diseases.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Nov. 21 that it has obtained a civil monetary penalty in the amount of $700,000 from CRI Genetics LLC, an enforcement action taken under the agency’s policy for biometrics information.
Cajal Neuroscience Inc., a startup seeking new targets to use in medicines for neurodegeneration, has launched with the completion of a $96 million series A financing led by The Column Group and Lux Capital. The company, inspired by the pioneering work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, is focused on the "mechanistic, spatial and temporal complexity of neurodegeneration" to determine "how, where and when different mechanisms contribute to disease."
The U.K. NHS is implementing the use of Oxford, U.K.-based Genincode plc’s predictive genetic test for patients suffering with hypercholesterolemia and familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). The Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria (AHSN NENC) is adopting the Lipid Incode test in Darlington following a successful pilot study which demonstrated the test can detect and diagnose people with high cholesterol, a known risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is the first commercial polygenic test for CVD to be implemented by the NHS.
U.K. health tech startup Sano Genetics Ltd. landed $11 million to develop a genetic data-sharing platform that connects patients with clinical researchers. MMC Ventures led the series A funding round, with Episode 1, Seedcamp and other individual investors participating.
It’s a big day for privately held Empirico Inc. as it embarks on a massive combo pharma deal with Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. while racking up a $17 million series A-2 financing.
The leucine-repeat rich kinase 2 (Lrrk2) gets most of its attention in the context of Parkinson's disease (PD). Variants in Lrrk2 are a major cause of familial PD (though familial PD makes up only a small fraction of overall PD cases).
In an era when data are more valuable than gold, China has rolled out new regulations to strengthen control of its human genetics data. Any foreign biotech companies or institutes intending to use Chinese data must engage a Chinese partner in the research project, amongst other new requirements.
