Venture Capital And Other Funding Deals At A Glance
Company	Financing
Odyssey Therapeutics; Boston	The start-up, helmed by serial entrepreneur Gary Glick, came out of stealth mode on 7 December with a $218m series A round led by OrbiMed Advisors and co-led by SR One Capital Management to fund development of novel cancer therapies ad precision immunomodulators for inflammatory diseases. Odyssey’s drug discovery platform combines target biology, medicinal and structural chemistry, physics-based molecular simulations, artificial intelligence and machine learning with the aim of expanding the druggable genome. Founder, president and CEO Glick was CEO of IFM Therapeutics when it sold oncology assets to Bristol Myers Squibb Company in a transaction worth potentially more than $2.3bn in 2017 and when it sold an NLRP3 inhibitor to Novartis AG for up to $1.6bn in 2019. (Also see "Novartis Dives Into Inflammasome Pool With IFM Tre Purchase" - Scrip, 1 April, 2019.)
Avistone Pharmaceuticals; Beijing, San Francisco and Boston	The clinical-stage precision oncology therapeutics developer said on 8 December that it received a strategic investment of more than $200m led by Vivo Capital with participation from Bain Capital and Primavera Capital to support the combination of Avistone with Pearl Biotechnology Co. Ltd. and accelerate development and expansion of the company’s drug development pipeline. Avistone aims to expand its efforts outside of China and prepare for commercialization. Its lead drug candidate is a C-Met inhibitor in late-stage clinical development for genetically-driven non-small cell lung cancer and glioblastoma, with a breakthrough therapy designation from China’s National Medical Products Administration. Avistone has other tyrosine kinase inhibitors in Phase I and other assets in preclinical development.
Acepodia, Inc.; Alameda, CA	Digital Mobile Venture and other new and existing investors led a $109m series C round that Acepodia announced on 2 December to further validate its antibody-cell conjugate (ACC) platform for the development of cell therapies in the treatment of cancer and to advance its pipeline of antibody cell effector (ACE) therapies. The company has raised $166m to date, including a $47m series B round in March, to fund development of its ACE therapies, which use antibodies to direct immune cells, such as natural killer or gamma delta T-cells, to tumors without the need for viral vector-delivered gene transductions or genetic engineering used in CAR-T therapies. (Also see "Finance Watch: Cell And Gene Therapy Firms Raised Nearly $20bn In 2020" - Scrip, 18 March, 2021.)
Emergence Therapeutics AG; Duisburg, Germany	Emergence revealed on 7 December that it closed a Pontifax Venture Capital-led €87m ($97.9m) series A round to fund its development of ADCs for the treatment of cancer. The company plans to advance its lead ADC candidate, ETx-22, through clinical proof-of-concept with an initial focus on bladder cancer and triple-negative breast cancer. The next-generation Nectin-4-targeting ADC is designed for better efficacy and reduced toxicity compared with first-generation therapies.
METiS Therapeutics; Cambridge, MA	METiS debuted on 7 December with $86m that it will use to harness AI and machine learning for the discovery and development of best-in-class therapies across a wide range of serious diseases. The company will develop and in-license novel assets with a focus on small molecules and nucleic acid therapeutics.
OncoMyx Therapeutics, Inc.; Phoenix	More than two years after it completed a $25m series A round to develop cancer immunotherapies with a myxoma virus platform licensed from Arizona State University, OncoMyx said on 8 December that it closed a $50m series B round co-led by Lumira Ventures and B Capital Group. (Also see "Finance Watch: Third Rock Raises $770m To Launch Up To 12 New Companies" - Scrip, 7 June, 2019.) The company will continue to advance its myxoma immunotherapies for solid tumors and hematological malignancies and take its lead candidate into clinical trials.
Totus Medicines; Cambridge, MA	Drug discovery firm Totus Medicines, which aims to use its “breakthrough chemical biology” to make the entire human genome druggable, came of out stealth mode on 9 December with $40m in series A funding and lead drug candidate TOS-358, a PI3Kα inhibitor that it claims to be more effective than predecessor drugs in shrinking tumors. TOS-358 will move into the clinic during the second half of 2022.
Tune Therapeutics; Durham, NC and Seattle	Tune launched on 2 December with an epigenomic control platform for precise genetic tuning of master gene networks, called TEMPO, which it is using to develop treatments for a range of diseases, including cancer, other genetic diseases and diseases of aging. The company, which aims to dial gene expression up or down without breaking or rewriting DNA, has raised $40m to date.
K36 Therapeutics Inc.; Cambridge, MA	F-Prime Capital and Atlas Venture co-led a $30m series A round that K36 announced on 9 December to fund clinical proof-of-concept studies for lead drug candidate KTX-1001, a selective inhibitor of the histone methyltransferase (HMT) MMSET, which is overexpressed in up to 20% of multiple myeloma patients. K36 licensed KTX-1001 from Novartis and plans to submit an investigational new drug (IND) application for the drug to the US Food and Drug Administration during the first half of 2022. The company’s overall focus is epigenetic modulation of oncogenic pathways via small molecule therapeutics.
CODA Biotherapeutics, Inc.; South San Francisco	CODA announced $28m in new financing on 2 December, including a round led by Pacira Biosciences Inc. and new venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank, to fund its development of a gene therapy-mediated chemogenetic platform for the treatment of neurological disorders, starting with neuropathic pain and epilepsy. The company closed a $34m series A round in November 2019. (Also see "Finance Watch: Cell And Gene Therapies Buck 2019’s Venture Capital Trend" - Scrip, 9 November, 2019.)
PDC*line Pharma SAS; Liege, Belgium and Grenoble, France	Off-the-shelf cancer vaccine developer PDCLine said on 6 December that it has raised €17.5m ($20.3m) in series B2 financing, including €11.8m in venture capital and €5.7m in grants. This follows a €20m series B1 financings in January of last year to support a now under way Phase I/II trial for lead candidate PDClung01 in lung cancer. (Also see "European Clinical-Stage Cancer Vaccine Gains South Korean Support" - Scrip, 23 January, 2020.)
Cyrus Biotechnology Inc.; Seattle	The company, which has a proprietary software platform for biologics discovery, revealed on 6 December that it closed an $18m series B round and closed its acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics, a deep mutational scanning protein engineering spin-out from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Cyrus is redesigning natural proteins to produce superior biologics for a wide range of infectious diseases, rheumatology, rare disease and autoimmune indications for its own pipeline and for partners, including series B investor Selecta Biosciences.
SRI Biosciences; Menlo Park, CA	The company said on 8 December that it was awarded a$14.7m contract sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) through the Medical, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense Consortium (MCDC) to continue development of high-concentrationnaloxone for intravenous, intramuscular and subcutaneous injection, or intravenous infusion to treat people who overdose on toxic doses of ultra-high-potency synthetic opioids.
Bloom Science, Inc.; San Diego	Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG, and the ALS Investment Fund led a $12m series A financing that Bloom announced disclosed on 9 December to fund its development of microbiome-based treatments for neurological and inflammatory diseases with initial programs in drug-resistant epilepsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Nabla Bio; Boston	Khosla Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners co-led an $11m seed round that Nabla announced on 6 December to accelerate the development of its AI-enabled protein design platform for next-generation antibody therapeutics.
Sixfold Bioscience; London	Sixfold said on 2 December that it completed a $10.5m seed round to support the continued development of its computation- and advanced chemistry-enabled Mergo RNA therapeutics delivery platform, which aims to bring mRNA and siRNA to tissues beyond the liver.

Finance Watch: Four New VC Funds Provide $1.3bn For Biotech Start-Ups

Four Venture Mega-Rounds Total $844.5m

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