Venture Capital Deals At A Glance
Company	Financing
QurAlis Corporation; Cambridge, MA	The company, which is developing precision medicines for neurodegenerative diseases, said on 9 March that it closed an $88m series B round, bringing its total funding to date to $143.5m. QurAlis raised a $42m series A round in May 2020 on top of prior seed funding. (Also see "Finance Watch: Atea Pharmaceuticals Raises $215m For COVID-19 Antiviral" - Scrip, 21 May, 2020.) Lead amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) drug candidates QRL-101, a selective Kv7.2/7.3 ion channel opener, and QRL-201, which aims to restore STMN2 expression, recently moved into clinical trials. The company is also researching additional ALS and frontotemporal dementia drug candidates.
Ring Therapeutics; Cambridge, MA	Ring said on 9 March that it has raised $230m to date, including a new $86.5m series C round, to fund its development of next-generation programmable genetic medicines and to advance anellovirus-based gene therapies and nucleic acid medicines from its Anellogy technology platform toward the clinic. The Flagship Pioneering-founded company launched with $50m in 2019 and raised a $117m series B round in 2021. (Also see "Finance Watch: A Summer Slowdown? Not For Venture Capital Mega-Rounds" - Scrip, 6 August, 2021.)
LENZ Therapeutics; San Diego	LENZ, which raised a $47m series A round in June 2021, revealed an $83.5m series B round on 7 March to fund its Phase III CLARITY clinical trial program for LNZ100 (aceclidine) and LNZ101 (aceclidine and brimonidine) for patients with loss of near vision associated with presbyopia. (Also see "Finance Watch: Insilico Raises $255m To Take AI-Discovered Drugs Into The Clinic" - Scrip, 23 June, 2021.) The company will test its once-daily eye drops in the three-trial Phase III program that kicked off in December.
Volastra Therapeutics, Inc.; New York	Funded with $44m in seed financing as of April 2021, Volastra announced on 7 March that it closed a $60m series A financing. (Also see "Finance Watch: Insilico Raises $255m To Take AI-Discovered Drugs Into The Clinic" - Scrip, 23 June, 2021.) The company also received $30m up front from Bristol Myers Squibb Company under a partnership announced last year. (Also see "BMS Is Latest To Join Synthetic Lethality Bandwagon With Volastra Deal" - Scrip, 21 March, 2022.) Volastra leverages synthetic lethality and immune activation to exploit chromosomal instability in tumors. Concurrent with its series A announcement, the company said it in-licensed Amgen, Inc.’s KIF18A inhibitor sovlinesib (AMG650), which is in Phase I for platinum-resistant high-grade serious ovarian cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and other solid tumors with TP53 mutations. Volastra will advance clinical development of sovlinesib and its own KIF18A inhibitor VLS-1488 in 2023.
Ampersand Biomedicines; Cambridge, MA	Flagship Pioneering unveiled Ampersand on 7 March with an initial commitment of $50m to advance the company’s Address, Navigate, Design (AND) platform for the development of programmable medicines across a range of diseases that are safer, more tolerable and effective by acting at the site of disease. AND uses computational tools and multi-omics characterization of diseases to create therapeutics that act conditionally at the site of their intended disease targets. Ampersand’s initial funding will be used to build the technology platform and a pipeline of drug candidates.
OriCell Therapeutics Co. Ltd.; Shanghai	OriCell, a developer of cellular immunotherapeutics that raised a more than $120m series B round in August 2022, said on 28 February that it closed a $45m series B1 financing, primarily to fund its development activities in the US. (Also see "Finance Watch: Sironax, IDRx, OriCell Reveal First VC Mega-Rounds Of August" - Scrip, 5 August, 2022.) Lead product candidate OriCAR-017 is a CAR-T therapy targeting GPRC5D for the treatment of multiple myeloma that is in IND-enabling studies for the US and China.
Eluminex Biosciences Limited; Suzhou, China and San Francisco	Eluminex said on 27 February that it closed a $40m-plus series B round to advance its ophthalmic R&D pipeline and its recombinant human collagen technology platform. The company’s pipeline includes multi-targeted antibody molecules for vision-threatening retinal diseases, a Phase IIb/III oral small molecule for rare inherited pediatric retinal dystrophies licensed from Retinagenix in February 2022, and clinical development and manufacturing of recombinant human collagen-based products, including a biosynthetic cornea for corneal stromal blinding diseases. (Also see "Asia Deal Watch: SV Investment And Orange Grove Will Team Up On New Company Effort" - Scrip, 15 February, 2022.)
Olatec Therapeutics LLC; New York	The company announced on 23 February that it completed a $40m series A round to advance its portfolio of oral NLRP3 inhibitors for acute and chronic inflammatory diseases mediated by IL-1, including lead drug candidate dapansutrile, which has been tested in Phase IIa in acute gouty arthritis and is expected to advance into Phase II. The oral drug has also been evaluated in a Phase Ib heart failure study and a topical formulation has been tested in two Phase II osteoarthritis studies.
Transcend Therapeutics; New York	Transcend, which is developing medicines for neuropsychiatric diseases, revealed a $40m series A round on 23 February. The funding will allow the company to start multiple clinical trials, including a Phase II study for lead psychoactive compound methylone (TSND-201) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Peel Therapeutics; Salt Lake City	Clinical-stage cancer- and inflammation-focused Peel said on 23 February that with $9m in new funding its seed round now totals $36m. PEEL-224, the company’s oral small molecule targeting topoisomerase 1 activity and engineered to avoid chemoresistance, is being tested in a Phase I solid tumor trial.
TandemAI; Suzhou, Shanghai and New York	TandemAI raised $25m in seed and pre-series A financing in late 2021 and on 1 March announced that it raised a $35m series A round to expand its drug discovery services platform, which integrates computational tools, lab biophysics, medicinal chemistry and biology. The company will grow to more than 500 chemists and biologists as it expands its artificial intelligence-based services to clients in the US and China.
Tachyon Therapeutics, Inc.; San Francisco and Houston	Tachyon, which is developing cancer therapeutics against novel drug targets, announced $18.7m in new financing on 1 March, including a $7.1m grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to support a Phase I solid tumor trial for TACH101, a small molecule inhibitor of KDM4 histone demethylase. Tachyon also closed a round to equity financing that totaled $11.6m to fund the TACH101 program and to advance the company’s pipeline of drug candidates targeting unexplored mechanisms of tumorigenesis.
Iktos; Paris and Lausanne, Switzerland	The company said on 9 March that it closed a €15.5m ($16.4m) series A round to further develop its artificial intelligence and drug discovery capabilities, including extending its discovery services to biological products, including peptides and antibodies. Iktos, which has revealed several biopharma drug discovery partnerships to date, will also launch Iktos Robotics to further shorten discovery timelines. (Also see "Deal Watch: Iktos Doubles Its 2022 Alliance Tally In Agreements With Galapagos, Zealand" - Scrip, 1 July, 2022.)
Genascence Corporation; Palo Alto, CA	The gene therapy developer focused on prevalent musculoskeletal diseases revealed an $11.6m award from CIRM on 23 February to support a Phase Ib trial of GNSC-001 in knee osteoarthritis. Genascence previously raised a $10.5m series A round in May of last year. (Also see "Finance Watch: VC Mega-Rounds Are Alive And Well" - Scrip, 11 May, 2022.)
Resalis Therapeutics SRL; Torino, Italy	Resalis said on 22 February that it completed a €10m ($10.6m) seed financing to develop non-coding RNA (ncRNA)-based therapies for the treatment of metabolic diseases. The company plans to complete IND-enabling studies for lead program RES-010, a microRNA-22 inhibitor, as a treatment for obesity on non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases to support a first-in-human clinical trial in 2024.
Thymmune Therapeutics; Cambridge, MA	The company, which is developing thymic cell therapies to restore immune function in aging and disease, said on 1 March that it secured $7m in seed financing. Thymic will use the funding for preclinical studies of THY-100 in immune system disorders caused by thymic deficiencies, which result in a lack of functional T-cells, and to develop its thymic cell engineering platform, including expansion into additional immunology indications.
Verismo Therapeutics; Philadelphia	The clinical-stage CAR-T therapy spinout from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) disclosed a $7m pre-series A round on 28 February to support an ongoing clinical trial of SynKIR-110 for solid tumors and preclinical development of SynKIR-310 for blood cancer. Verismo has raised $33m since it launched in 2020 and plans to raise a series A round later this year. It signed a sponsored research agreement last year with Penn to advance preclinical programs based on the company’s KIR-CAR platform technology for solid tumor applications of CAR-T therapeutics. (Also see "Tech Transfer Roundup: Amylyx Goes Pipeline Hunting While Seeking US Approval Of ALS Candidate" - Scrip, 21 July, 2022.)

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