Excision Biotherapeutics Inc.’s CEO is specific when he talks about his company’s therapies and what they may achieve: a functional cure. “When you treat someone and they become cancer free, you can’t use the world ‘cured’ because the cancer may come back decades later,” Daniel Dornbusch told BioWorld. “But you can talk about a functional cure, meaning the cancer didn’t come back for a very long time. It’s functionally cured for maybe 10, 20 or 30 years."
Francesco de Rubertis, a co-founder of Medicixi Ventures, has unveiled the next generation of the venture-backed asset-centric biopharma model with the creation of Centessa Pharmaceuticals Ltd. The new company was created by acquiring, in all-share transactions, total control of 10 companies from the Medicxi portfolio.
Blue Ocean Spine GmbH has won a major investment from SHS GmbH, also from Tuttlingen in Germany, to develop its next-generation functional spinal implant. The two companies are declining to disclose the size of the series A investment.
Biopharmas in Asia-Pacific raising money in public or private financings, including: Adagene, Bionomics, Drug Farm Holding, Medincell, Neox, Neurophth.
Sagimet Biosciences Inc., a company developing an oral fatty acid synthase (FASN) inhibitor for the potential treatment of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, has raised $80 million in a crossover financing led by an undisclosed public equity health care investment fund.