Company	Investors	Use Of Proceeds
Insitro, San Francisco	Andreessen Horowitz led the $143m series B round; new investors include Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., funds managed by BlackRock, Casdin Capital, HOF Capital, WuXi AppTec Inc.’s corporate venture fund and other undisclosed investors. Prior investors also joined, including ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, GV, Third Rock Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and Alexandria Venture Investments.	With this financing and milestone fees from its partnership with Gilead Sciences Inc., the company will further invest in its machine learning-based, data-driven drug discover platform; prosecute new drug targets and identify patient segmentation biomarkers; and advance drug candidates for genetically defined patient populations, starting with liver and central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The company raised $100m in series A funding in 2018. (Also see "Deal Watch: Gilead To Use Insitro’s AI/Functional Genomics Tech For NASH Targets" - Scrip, 17 April, 2019.)
Abcellera, Vancouver, British Columbia	OrbiMed and prior investor DCVC Bio led the $105m series B round with participation from Viking Global Investors, Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Eli Lilly & Co., the University of Minnesota and Presight Capital.	The financing, which will fund the expansion of AbCellera’s antibody discovery engine, was revealed less than a week after the company and Lilly unveiled on 22 May that they entered into an agreement to discover antibodies for up to nine Lilly-selected targets, with an initial focus on COVID-19; upfront and milestone fees under the agreement were not disclosed.
Exscientia Ltd., Oxford, UK; Copenhagen; and Hamburg, Germany	New investor Novo Holdings led the company’s $60m series C round announced on 26 May. Existing investors Evotec, Bristol Myers Squibb and GT Healthcare Capital Partners (through certain LPs) also participated.	Exscientia will expand its artificial intelligence (AI)-based drug discovery capabilities, advance new drug development programs, take advanced programs into the clinic and expand its footprint to the US. The first AI-discovered drug ever to enter the clinic was Exscientia’s candidate for obsessive-compulsive disorder in partnership with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co. Ltd. The firm also has AI drug discovery partnerships with Roche, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline PLC. (Also see "Two Years Of Artificial Intelligence Deals: A Pharma Snapshot" - Scrip, 30 May, 2019.)
Q32 Bio, Cambridge, MA	Atlas Venture led a $46m series A round announced on 27 May. OrbiMed Advisors, Abingworth, Sanofi Ventures, University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado Center for Innovation also participated. Q32’s intellectual property comes from researchers at the University of Colorado and the Medical University of South Carolina.	The company is developing biologics to restore healthy immune regulation, including ADX-914 – a monoclonal antibody antagonist of the interleukin-7 receptor (IL-7R) – licensed from Bristol Myers Squibb. It also has a complement therapeutics platform, which has generated fusion proteins that downregulate complement activity in disease-specific tissues with ADX-097 as its lead program from this platform. Q32 plans to initiate clinical trials for ADX-914 in late 2020 and ADX-097 in the second half of 2021.
Palvella Therapeutics Inc., Wayne, PA	CAM Capital, Samsara BioCapital, BVF Partners LP, Adams Street Partners, Opaleye Management, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc., Agent Capital, BioAdvance and Nolan Capital (the investment fund of former AveXis Inc. CEO Sean Nolan) invested in a $45m series C round announced on 28 May. Ligand invested $10m in Palvella last year for royalties from the company’s lead drug candidate PTX-022 (Qtorin 3.9% rapamycin anhydrous gel). (Also see "Deal Watch: Gilead Signs Two Deals In Two Days To Increase R&D Emphasis" - Scrip, 4 January, 2019.)	Palvella, which is developing pathogenetically targeted therapies for rare genetic diseases, will use the proceeds to fund ongoing development of PTX-022 for pachyonychia congenita (PC) and to advance other candidates, including another rapamycin formulation known as PTX-367 for Gorlin syndrome. Top-line results from a pivotal Phase II/III study of PTX-022 – a topical mTOR inhibitor designed to repress the mutated keratin genes responsible for PC – are expected in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Monte Rosa Therapeutics, Boston	The company came out stealth mode on 26 May with a $32.5m series A commitment from founding investor Versant Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Monte Rosa was launched from Versant’s discovery engine Ridgeline in the Basel Technology Park in Switzerland in collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and Cancer Research UK to develop small molecule protein degraders.	Monte Rosa will file one or more IND applications in 2021. Its lead drug candidate MRT-048 has been tested successfully in several models of treatment-resistant breast cancer. The company will soon pursue a series B financing as well as drug discovery collaborations with pharmaceutical companies.
ViaCyte Inc., San Diego	The regenerative medicine specialist said on 26 May that it closed a $27m add-on to its $80m series D round announced in December 2018. (Also see "Finance Watch: Alternative Funding Sources Crucial Even Amidst A Biopharma VC Boom" - Scrip, 17 December, 2018.) Bain Capital Life Sciences, TPG Capital, RA Capital Management, Sanderling Ventures and several individual investors provided the additional financing.	ViaCyte is developing cell therapies to treat diabetes with the goal of providing a functional cure for patients with type 1 diabetes. The company’s pancreatic islet progenitor cell product candidates PEC-01 and PEC-Encap are in clinical trials. ViaCyte and CRISPR Therapeutics AG are collaborating on the development of immune-evasive stem cells in the preclinical PEC-QT program.

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