LONDON – Exscientia Ltd. has closed a $60 million series C funding, attracting Novo Holdings as new investor to lead the round, which will enable the artificial intelligence (AI) specialist to progress its first in-house program to the clinic before the end of 2020.
Avectas Ltd., of Dublin, brought in a $20 million series C financing, ratcheting the total equity investment in the company to $40 million. Privately held Avectas, formed in 2012 as a spin-out from Ireland’s Maynooth University, said it plans to accelerate the clinical translation and commercial scale-up of its cell engineering technology and expand its staffing in Ireland.
HONG KONG – Chinese biopharmaceutical company Abbisko Therapeutics Co. Ltd., of Shanghai, defied turbulent stock markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic to snag $70 million in its latest round of financing.
HONG KONG – Chinese biopharmaceutical company Abbisko Therapeutics Co. Ltd., of Shanghai, defied turbulent stock markets amid the COVID-19 pandemic to snag $70 million in its latest round of financing.
Keros Therapeutics Inc. CEO Jasbir Seehra told BioWorld that he plans to use at his new company lessons learned as co-founder of Acceleron Pharma Inc., where work with receptors in the TGF-beta superfamily “taught me the potential of the biology and those molecules, but also the limitations” with regard to safety that need to be surmounted.
San Francisco-based startup Element Science Inc. has raised a massive financing in support of the first product that is part of its next-generation digital wearable platform. The $145.6 million series C financing is slated to support the company through clinical trial completion and commercial launch of its Jewel Patch Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator.
DUBLIN – Neotx Therapeutics Ltd. raised $45 million in a series C round to continue clinical development of an immuno-oncology agent that already has a long clinical history behind it. Its lead molecule, naptumomab estafenatox, is a fusion protein comprising an antibody fragment that recognizes the oncofetal antigen 5T4 and a bacterial “super-antigen” comprising a modified version of the Staphylococcal enterotoxin A.
Alx Oncology Inc. pulled down a $105 million series C equity financing to support the expansion into phase II trials with ALX-148, described as a next-generation CD47 myeloid checkpoint inhibitor, paired with other cancer therapeutics. ALX-148 uses a “dead” Fc domain that does not bind to macrophages, thus reducing cytopenia and other toxicities associated with the class.
LONDON – Cmr Surgical Ltd. has again broken the record for a private financing round for a European med-tech company, raising £195 million (US$240 million) in a series C that will fund global commercialization of its portable robotic surgery system, Versius. Since the record-breaking series B in May 2018, when it raised $100 million, Cmr has set up offices in four continents and completed 30 first-in-human procedures. Currently, there are no commercial users, but the company now employs more than 400 people.
Healthy.io had plenty of news to report last week. To begin, the Tel Aviv, Israel-based company, which is focusing on turning the smartphone camera into a clinical-grade medical device, now has a second clearance. In addition, the company closed a $60 million series C funding round.