PERTH, Australia – With new funding in hand from Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley Inc., Loop+ founders and sisters Kath Hamilton and Clare Conroy and are on their way to commercializing a pressure and movement tracking device they developed for wheelchair-bound patients.
PARIS – White Fund SA, of Lièges, Belgium, secured $22 million for early stage financing of Belgian med-tech companies. “Our shareholders are investing in a specialized fund [that], beyond financial returns, [creates] expectations in terms of supporting the strong med-tech ecosystem in Belgium and advantages in terms of job creation,” explained Benoît Fellin, investment manager at Noshaq SA, manager of the White Fund.
Wall Street’s enthusiasm ran high for Cambridge, Mass.-based Black Diamond Therapeutics Inc. (BDT), shares of which (NASDAQ:BDTX) closed 108% higher at $39.48, after the company priced its upsized IPO of about 10.5 million shares at $19 each, for gross proceeds of about $201 million. As recently as December, the company pulled down $85 million in a series C financing. BDT’s lead product candidates target oncogenic driver mutations of the ErbB kinases in EGFR and HER2. At the time, the firm noted that it had raised $194 million thus far. With the IPO, which first set sights on 8.9 million shares in the range of $16 to $18 each, the picture grows even brighter.
DUBLIN – Bergenbio ASA raised NOK219.9 million (US$23.9 million) in a private placement priced at NOK18 per share. The fresh injection of cash will enable the Bergen, Norway-based firm to expand its broad development program for lead drug candidate bemcentinib (BGB-324), a first-in-class Axl inhibitor, which is currently in phase II development in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), triple-negative breast cancer and melanoma.
IDbyDNA Inc., a San Francisco-based metagenomics technology company, scooped up $20 million in series B financing in a round led by Artis Ventures. Genesys Capital and others participated in the round. The company plans to use the money to accelerate uptake of its Explify software platform.
TORONTO – Vancouver, British Columbia-based Aspect Biosystems Inc. has raised CA$26 million (US$20 million) in series A funding to help develop 3D bioprinter technology that uses the science of microfluidics to create fresh human tissue.