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.

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.

Nkarta Therapeutics Inc.'s CEO, Paul Hastings, said while the clever spelling of the company's name puts its natural killer cell platform at the fore, he is also prompted more often than not to have to spell it out, just to make sure there's no mistake. Still, he added, the occasional hotel bill is sent to Encarta instead of Nkarta.

DUBLIN – Repare Therapeutics Inc. raised $82.5 million in a series B round to progress its pipeline of precision oncology drugs that target vulnerabilities in cancer cells arising from combinations of synthetically lethal mutations.

DUBLIN – Gyroscope Therapeutics Ltd. raised £50.4 million (US$60.5 million) to further development of GT-005, its clinical-stage gene therapy for treating dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and to advance a second-generation of the subretinal delivery system it gained through its recent merger with Orbit Biomedical Ltd.

LONDON – Achilles Therapeutics Ltd. closed a £100 million (US$120 million) series B round to fund two proof-of-concept studies of its next-generation T-cell immunotherapy in solid tumors, and to build a commercial-scale, fully automated facility for manufacturing the personalized product.

Liquid biopsy startup Freenome Inc., of South San Francisco, reeled in $160 million in a series B financing that was led by RA Capital Management and Polaris Partners. The funds are earmarked to advance Freenome's multiomics blood testing platform for early cancer detection and to grow its laboratory and software capabilities.

David Southwell, a seasoned pharma exec and CEO of newly funded Tscan Therapeutics Inc., called from a small, unadorned conference room on the Harvard campus to talk about his new company. He's used to being on the clinical development side, where the accommodations are a bit more posh, but nonetheless he's pleased to be investigating T-cell therapy for cancer patients.