DUBLIN – Versant Ventures is committing $35 million in series A funding to Bright Peak Therapeutics Inc., which is developing a pipeline of engineered cytokines that are produced using a novel chemical synthesis technique rather than the recombinant methods that have underpinned more than four decades of biotechnology development.
LONDON – Enthera Pharmaceuticals Srl has announced the largest international series A to date for an Italian biotech, closing a €28 million (US$32.9 million) round, to take programs in type 1 diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) into phase I development.
LONDON - The combined force of Belgian life sciences has been brought together in the launch of Exevir Bio BV, which arrives on the scene with a €23 million (US$27 million) series A and ready for a phase I study of its novel antiviral therapy in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
A medical device company has partnered with a couple of investment firms to tap new technologies and help bring them back to China. Venus Medtech (Hangzhou) Inc. formed a health care investment platform, Ascendum Capital Partners, to invest in new medical devices and technologies around the world, particularly in the cardiovascular and lung disease spaces.
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) kills millions of people worldwide each year, triggered by an electrical malfunction in the heart that causes it to unexpectedly stop beating, often without warning. Health care startup Transformative AI Ltd. wants to reduce those deaths. To that end, the company has secured $1.7 million in seed funding for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software that predicts a patient’s risk of suffering SCA based on subtle physiological changes.
As Carmel, Ind.-based MBX Biosciences Inc., taking aim at rare endocrine diseases, disclosed $34.6 million in a series A financing, CEO and co-founder Kent Hawryluk told BioWorld that “everyone on the leadership team we’ve worked with in prior lives, so to speak,” adding that he’s “excited to have the band back together.”