A spin-out from the University of Oxford, UK, has raised £67 million from a Series A financing to advance clinical development of a new monoclonal antibody for treating essential thrombocythaemia (ET), a rare blood cancer. Alethio Therapeutics Ltd is building a portfolio of medicines to treat myeloproliferative neoplasms of which ET is one.
Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has broadened a two-year oncology agreement with Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd of Hong Kong, enabling the two parties to explore treatments based on antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and T cell engagers. The companies launched their first collaboration in 2024 when BI agreed to supply Sino, now known as the SBP Group, with a small group of experimental drugs for further development.
AM-Pharma BV of the Netherlands is being acquired by a specialist healthcare company in the UK in a deal that will see its enzyme replacement therapy for hypophosphatasia (HPP) advance to Phase 2. The buyer is Ambrose Healthcare Ltd which already has two rare disease programmes in its portfolio and is positioning itself for more. This comes at a time when the US Food and Drug Administration is updating its guidance for the developers of drugs for rare diseases. Current estimates put the number of these diseases at 7,000 to 10,000 globally.
Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd announced a second antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) deal with the Roche Group on 19 October, giving the Chinese company an upfront payment of $400 million. The two companies did not disclose the specific cancers that they will be investigating. They did however say that Hansoh will lead early development of the programmes up to the completion of global Phase 1a clinical trials. After this, Roche will be responsible for further development worldwide – excluding the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
OMass Therapeutics Ltd, a 2016 spin-out from the University of Oxford, has raised $310 million in a Series C financing to support development of its lead programme for congenital adrenal hyperplasia and ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome. The funding was announced on 15 October.
AstraZeneca Plc is to explore the use of artificial intelligence in drug development and expand its oncology portfolio under two new collaborations with US companies. The first, announced on 28 September, is an equity investment and clinical collaboration with Summit Therapeutics Inc under which the companies will investigate combination therapies of a bispecific antibody from Summit with antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) from AstraZeneca.
A new platform company focused on the delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to cells was launched on 13 October with the goal of addressing one of the main limitations of genetic medicines – reaching tissues beyond the liver. Undecimal Bio Ltd is a spin-out of Eleven Therapeutics (UK) Ltd, a synthetic medicines company. It has raised $18 million in seed financing from a syndicate co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital of the UK. Its initial therapeutic focus is renovascular disease.
In the US and elsewhere, programmes financed by governments for national defense can take many forms – including to support basic science. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US, originally founded in the late 1950s to develop satellite technology, has in recent years branched out into computers and vaccines. On 23 September, DARPA stepped deeper into biology with the award of a research grant of up to $14 million to a consortium led by Scarlet Therapeutics Ltd of the UK to develop engineered, laboratory-produced red blood cells for defense.
A syndicate of venture capitalists, with support from the European Regional Development Fund, has raised seed financing of €40 million for Aptadir Therapeutics Srl of Italy to support development of a new RNA therapeutic for difficult genetic disorders. The preclinical compound is being investigated for Fragile X syndrome, an inherited generic, neurological disorder.
Sofinnova Partners SAS has created a new fund to build and support companies developing medical technologies with plans to launch six to eight new companies over the next five years. This is being enabled by an over-subscribed €82 million financing round announced on 28 September. While the target technologies haven’t been identified, the broad approach is to create companies from the ground up. Explaining this strategy, Antoine Papiernik, managing partner, said the investment group builds and supports “every company from day one.” These assets are then scaled up.