BOSTON – Panelists at Biopharm America debated strategies for early stage financing as they weighed the importance of a prestigious board, the wisdom of small deals by startups with pharma firms, and the likelihood (or not) that angel investors will help make the case with other backers yet to come.

Royal Oak, Mich.-based liquid biopsy startup Oncocell MDx Inc. reeled in $22.2 million in a series B financing led by Savitr Capital, with participation from existing investors. The company, which has raised a total of $30 million to date, plans to use the proceeds to support ongoing development of its pan-disease immunogenomics platform and commercialization of its novel noninvasive blood-based tests.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based 10x Genomics Inc. priced its initial public offering to raise $390 million and then immediately climbed in the first hours of trading. The single-cell sequencing company had upwardly revised its share price range twice – and then priced above the latest one at $39 per share, heading to above $55 (NASDAQ:TXG) in its first few hours as a public company. That gave it a market cap of about $5.1 billion. 10x Genomics also took advantage of its momentum by boosting the number of shares to 10 million from the anticipated 9 million.

Royal Oak, Mich.-based liquid biopsy startup Oncocell MDx Inc. reeled in $22.2 million in a series B financing led by Savitr Capital, with participation from existing investors. The company, which has raised a total of $30 million to date, plans to use the proceeds to support ongoing development of its pan-disease immunogenomics platform and commercialization of its novel noninvasive blood-based tests.

BEIJING – Biologics developer Hisun Bioray Bio-pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinese state-owned drugmaker Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., received ¥3.8 billion (US$540 million) from Hong Kong investor PAG for a 58% stake in the company.

Anokion SA, a Swiss biotech focused on autoimmune disease, is bringing in-house a startup it spun out for a development alliance with Astellas Pharma Inc. The acquisition of Kanyos Bio Inc., announced alongside news it closed a $40 million series B financing, puts front and center KAN-101, a preclinical celiac disease drug poised for an IND filing by year-end. Together with Anokion's lead candidate, ANK-780, an antigen-specific treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS), the company anticipates having two programs in clinical development within the next 12 months.

DUBLIN – Inotrem SA raised €39 million (US$42.9 million) in a series B round to finance a phase IIb trial of its first-in-class septic shock drug candidate, nangibotide, along with a candidate biomarker that may enable it to select patients most likely to benefit from the therapy.