With the massive amounts of capital raised by global public and private biopharmaceutical companies last year generating approximately $134 billion – a total that was almost double the previous record of about $69 billion raised in 2015 – it is not surprising that financing for the regenerative medicine and advanced therapy sector also set an annual record.
Scribe Therapeutics Inc. raised $100 million in a series B round to continue its engineering-intensive approach to developing CRISPR-based therapies that employ custom-designed CasX enzymes.
CEO Dipal Doshi of Boston-based Entrada Therapeutics Inc. said the field of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) therapeutics has seen “a lot of first-generation, interesting programs that have kickstarted more focus” on the disease, “but no one really is fundamentally moving the needle in a robust clinical way.” His firm, with $116 million in new series B money, wants to change that. “Our focus on DMD is very direct and very specific,” he told BioWorld.
Charlene Liao, Immune-Onc Therapeutics Inc.’s CEO told BioWorld she has a solid plan for using the company’s new $73 million series B1 and B2 financing. “It is time to go beyond T cells and to consider myeloid checkpoints as the next wave of cancer immunotherapies,” she said. Immune-Onc will use the funding to target myeloid checkpoints, especially leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor subfamily B, as it continues to develop its blood cancer and solid tumor therapies.
LONDON – Inbrain Neuroelectronics Ltd. has raised €14.35 million (US$16.9 million) in a series A round to take nanoscale graphene implants it says have the potential to interface one-on-one with neurons, into clinical development later this year. The technology promises significant improvements on current implants used for deep brain stimulation to treat conditions including Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, obsessive compulsive disorder and neuropathic pain.
Qihan Biotechology Co. Ltd., a company known for its multiplexable genome editing technology, has yet again extended its series A financing, this time with a $67 million round that will support advancement of its allogeneic cell therapy candidates to IND in China. To date the company has raised more than $100 million.
Pyxis Oncology Inc., a company building a portfolio of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and immunotherapies for cancer, has closed a $152 million series B financing co-led by Arix Bioscience and RTW Investments LP. The fresh funds will help the company advance multiple ADC candidates in-licensed from Pfizer Inc. and Legochem Biosciences Inc. as well as its discovery-stage pipeline, CEO Lara Sullivan told BioWorld. The ADCs are expected to move to the clinic in 2022.