iMicrobes Secures $10M Seed Round to Power Sustainable Biomanufacturing (November 19, 2024) by synbiobeta. iMicrobes, a pioneering biomanufacturing company, has achieved a significant milestone on sustainable materials with the first close of its seed funding round, amassing over $10 million. This latest investment, led by First Bight Ventures and Universal Materials Incubator Co. (UMI), empowers
Novartis pays Schrödinger $150M, bets billions on the back end to form drug discovery pact (November 12, 2024) by Nick Paul Taylor. ovartis is paying $150 million for a closer look at Schrödinger’s catalog of programs. The Big Pharma will work with Schrödinger to advance some of the computing-enabled R&D shop’s discovery programs and identify
Terray Therapeutics rakes in $120M for AI-powered small-molecule drug development (October 22, 2024) by Kyt Dotson. Terray Therapeutics, a biotechnology company using artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of small-molecule drugs, said today it has raised $120 million in a Series B fundraising to enhance its AI platform. New investor Bedford Ridge Capital and existing
Forbion leads £35 million (c.$43 million) Series A financing in LoQus23 Therapeutics to advance its small molecule somatic expansion inhibition therapy for Huntington’s disease (October 2, 2024) in Portfolio News. Financing led by Forbion with participation from existing investors SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) and Novartis Venture Fund (NVF) Lead programme targeting MutSβ
Novartis inks $1B-plus biobucks deal with Flagship’s Generate (September 24, 2024) | By Gabrielle Masson. Novartis has inked a deal potentially worth more than $1 billion with Flagship-founded Generate:Biomedicines to develop protein therapeutics across multiple indications. The companies did not disclose specifics about potential disease areas, referring only to the pact as a “multi-target collaboration”
Scilex’s Semnur Pharmaceuticals to go public through $2.5B SPAC merger as it advances sciatica prospect (September 3, 2024) | By Zoey Becker. Semnur Pharmaceuticals, which is working on a non-opioid prospect for sciatica, has agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Denali Capital Acquisition Corp. in a deal worth $2.5 billion. Upon closure of
Bayer pens $547M biobucks pact with biotech pushing the boundaries of noncoding RNA (August 28, 2024) | By James Waldron. Bayer executives were keen to stress to Fierce this summer that the German pharma giant’s appetite for dealmaking hasn’t been curbed by a groupwide restructuring. Its latest cancer-focused collaboration suggests Bayer has indeed retained a
Otsuka Pharmaceutical to acquire Jnana Therapeutics in deal worth over $1.1bn The agreement includes a clinical-stage drug for the rare inherited metabolic disorder phenylketonuria (August 1, 2024) | By Emily Kimber. Jnana’s JNT-517 is an allosteric small molecule inhibitor of SLC6A19, a solute carrier that regulates amino acid reabsorption in the kidney, and has already
GSK and Flagship Pioneering partner in deal worth up to $7bn to discover medicines and vaccines The companies aim to develop a portfolio of up to ten candidates (July 31, 2024) | By Jen Brogan. Bringing together GSK’s expertise in disease and development capability via Flagship’s ecosystem of bioplatform companies, the collaboration aims to develop
Boehringer inks $1.3B acquisition of Nerio and its preclinical checkpoint inhibitors (July 29, 2024) | By James Waldron. Boehringer Ingelheim is offering up to $1.3 billion for Nerio Therapeutics and a preclinical immune checkpoint inhibitor program that the German pharma giant hopes will become the “centerpiece” of its immune-oncology portfolio. Nerio has been working on small molecules that
