Venture Capital Deals And Private Company Updates At A Glance
Company	Update
BigHat Biosciences, Inc.; San Mateo, CA	BigHat Biosciences raised $75m in a series B round announced on 20 July backed by new investors Amgen, Inc. and Bristol Myers Squibb Company. The funds will be used to grow the firm’s proprietary Milliner platform technology and advance it towards clinical studies. Milliner utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to design safer and more efficacious antibodies. BigHat has preclinical programs across oncology, inflammation and infectious disease. The company closed a $19m series A round last year. (Also see "Finance Watch: $2.2bn In New Funding Sources In February, So Far" - Scrip, 19 February, 2021.)
Cartography Biosciences, Inc.; Foster City, CA	The precision medicine specialist, which has created an atlas of immuno-oncology antigens, revealed on 19 July that it raised $57m in initial funding. Cartography will use the proceeds to advance its pipeline of novel therapies and identify new cancer drug targets with its modality-agnostic platform powered by machine learning and genomics.
Auron Therapeutics; Newton, MA	Auron is leveraging its machine learning- and multi-omics-based AURigin platform to develop therapies that target dysregulated differentiation and cellular plasticity in the treatment of cancer, and the company announced a $48m series A financing on 20 July. The cash will be used to advance Auron’s lead program toward the clinic and drive additional programs into drug discovery.
Manifold Bio; Boston	Triatomic Capital led a $40m series A round that Manifold disclosed on 14 July to advance its drug development programs and expand its protein engineering platform to support additional programs and partnerships. The company is using its in vivo biologics design platform to develop next-generation, targeting-enhanced protein therapeutics, which Manifold calls “targeted effectors,” such as cell engagers and antibody-drug conjugates, where efficacy is directed to a precise location by an engineered targeting domain. The firm developed initial programs in oncology after it raised $5.4m in seed funding in 2020.
Persephone Biosciences, Inc.; San Diego	Microbiome-based medicines developer Persephone said on 19 July that it closed a $15m seed funding round. The company will use the proceeds to expand its research and clinical programs across a range of diseases, and to conduct its ARGONAUT clinical trial to identify biomarkers for cancer treatments by mapping the gut-immune axis. Gingko Bioworks is providing enabling technology for the synthetic biology tools that Persephone will use in developing its medicines. Janssen Biotech has committed to helping conduct two arms of the ARGONAUT trial – one enrolling colorectal cancer patients and one enrolling healthy volunteers with varying degrees of cancer risk.
PACT Pharma; South San Francisco	After raising a $75m series C round in January 2020 to fund early clinical trials for its neoantigen-targeted autologous T-cell (NeoTCR-T) therapies, PACT filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice in California on 30 June indicating that the company would permanently lay off 94 employees effective 29 August. (Also see "Finance Watch: Billions Flow Into Biopharma Via Three New Investment Funds" - Scrip, 11 January, 2020.) PACT’s lead NeoTCR-T candidate is in Phase I trials, with or without an interleukin-2 (IL-2) therapy and with or without a PD-1 inhibitor, in patients with solid tumors.

Finance Watch: VC Fundraising Dips In Q2, But Mega-Deal Pace Is Strong

First Half Of 2022 Venture Cash Equals 2019 Full-Year Total

More from Financing

More from Business