What a start of the year for the life sciences ecosystem. Investment in European biotechs has dropped 67% in the first quarter of 2022. However, not even a rather rough start of the year is enough to scare the bravest. Big news on the investment funds front as Carlyle is set to acquire Abingworth. Despite the tumultuous market, Kynos Therapeutics has emerged from stealth mode, and HilleVax has filled for IPO. Doug Melton is reuniting with friends, and Tessera Therapeutics might have something to worry about. Meanwhile, RA Capital Management has published the best April Fool’s press release. Let’s dive in!

University of Edinburgh spin-out Kynos Therapeutics has emerged from stealth mode. The startup has raised a £6.5 million seed round led by Epidarex Capital, and seconded by IP Group and Scottish Enterprise. Innovate UK has contributed with a £2.5 million grant. Kynos focuses on inflammation-driven conditions where inflammation prevents immune system from correct functioning. The company aims to build on a decade of academic research on kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO), a pivotal enzyme in the tryptophan metabolism.

London-based GripAble has raised $11 million Series A. The round was led by Parkwalk and aims to fuel expansion into Europe and US of their data platform and therapy services for neurological and musculoskeletal rehab.

Resolution Therapeutics has raised £10 million extended Series A. The extension and previous £26.6 million Series A was led by Syncona. The company is developing autologous and allogenic macrophage cell therapy to repair inflammation-driven organ damage, with a focus on end-stage chronic liver disease.

Stevenage-based ReViral has been acquired by Pfizer. This clinical-stage biopharmaceutical startup focuses on discovering, developing, and commercialising antiviral therapeutics targeting the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). ReViral has developed sisunatovir, an inhibitor that blocks the fusion of the RSV to the host cell, and it is currently at phase 2 clinical development in infants.

Cambridge-based Microbiotica has secured funding (undisclosed amount) from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. The funding will be used to develop forward their MB310 candidate and file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application. MB310 is a fully defined Live Bacterial Therapeutic (LBT) comprising 10 bacterial species and IND would allow for their first-into-human clinical trial.

Cambridge startup Better Origin has raised $16 million series A. The round was led by Balderton Capital and seconded by existing backers Fly Ventures and Metavallon VC. The company has developed a technology that can sustainably convert full-grown insects into ingredients for salmon feed, pet feed and human food.

Investment in European biotechs (incl. UK) has dropped 67% in the first quarter of 2022, equivalent to $1.96 billion in equity investment. In contrast, $5.88 billion were in invested during the first quarter of 2021. In March 2022, European biotechs have raised €506.8M in 43 deals, the lowest figure since October 2021. In regards to new biotech stock listings, the first quarter of 2022 has been the slowest for biotech startups in the last three years. Excluding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), only 9 biotechs (3 in preclinical stage, 4 in Phase I, 1 in Phase 2, 1 in Phase 3) have become publicly traded companies on a US stock exchange. The number is strikingly lower if compared with the 33 companies that accomplished an initial public offering (IPO) at this time of the year in 2021. Whether there will be a comeback later in the year or biotech IPOs are returning to pre-pandemic levels remains to be elucidated.

Carlyle Group to acquire Abingworth to strength their healthcare arm. The life sciences VC has deployed $3 billion of equity in 197 biotech deals across 14 funds and the their consistent success speaks by itself: 73 portfolio companies have become public, 46 have been subjected to M&A, and 26 medicines have been approved by FDA. Carlyle and Abingworth are forming Launch Therapeutics, a company that will seek to partner with biotech ventures developing best and/or first-in-class late stage clinical assets. Launch Tx will be led by Anshul Thakral, former CCO at PDD and current Carlyle and Abingworth partner. The deal is expected to be final by the end of 2022. Carlyle is clearly taking a page from Blackstone, but will Launch Tx be the inception of an UK-based version of Flagship Pioneering?

5AM Ventures has closed two life science funds totaling $750 million, although their focus has not been disclosed yet. Past fund has focused on the intersection between (cardio-) genomics and digital /AI technology platforms (e.g. Artiva Biotherapeutics (off-the-shelf Natural Killer cell therapy), Camp4 Therapeutics (AI powered-RNA therapies), and Ensoma (in vivo gene editing platform for all hematopoietic and immune cells), among others).

Leaps, Bayer’s VC arm, has committed more than €1.3 billion in new investments though 2024, doubling the spending pace up to date. The VC firm expects to make 8-10 investments this year.

AbbVie and We Are Pioneer Group have launched ‘Golden Ticket’ program to help British early-stage life science ventures commercialising their research. The program focuses in four therapeutics areas: immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care.

Artios Pharma ATR inhibitor (ART0380) has progressed to Phase 1b. Artios is pioneering the development of small molecules targeting the DNA damage response process, a key pathway in a broad range of tumorogenesis. Their ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related (“ATR”) Inhibitor targets ATM protein kinase deficient tumours such high grade serous ovarian, primary peritoneal or fallopian tube carcinoma.

Cambridge Science spun out Kyttaro has licensed two atherosclerosis antibodies from Eli Lilly, designed against both Angiopoietin-like protein (ANGPTL) 3 and ANGPTL 8. It is expected they both will be in clinic next year. Remarkably, Kyttaro is just about 1 year old startup, and has not disclosed future funding plans beyond seeking investment from “pacient centric” VCs. The company joins a highly competed space, full of big failures (Pfizer & Ionis’ RNA-based drug lack of safety and efficacy), but also great successes (FDA approved Regeneron’s Evkeeza in February 2021, although this only targets ANGPTL3).

Evonetix has been granted IP in Europe (EP3551331B1) on thermally controlled DNA-synthesis. Conventional approaches for DNA synthesis use acid deprotection to control the synthesis cycle. In contrast, Evonetix aims to bring semiconductor technology into DNA synthesis. It uses thermal control with semiconductor-based arrays populated with thousands of individual synthesis sites, thus offering greater accuracy and selectivity for sequence deprotection.

Engitix has signed an agreement with Takeda for the discovery, development and commercialisation of novel therapeutics for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Engitix will use their proprietary human extracellular matrix (ECM) platform to investigate ECM bioactive role on disease progression, and thus reducing late-clinical stage failures. The company can receive up to $300 million upon milestones achievement and Takeda will retain exclusive rights on certain clinical assets.

Looking across the pond, it still takes two for tango, especially if the tango is to be AAV-delivered. Myeloid Therapeutics (Siddhartha Mukherjee and Ronald Vale) has partnered with Prime Medicine (David Liu) to make the most out of their myeloid retrotransposon intellectual property, the so-called RetroT, an RNA-based gene-insertion technology that aims to deliver full genetic sequences in a single mRNA strand. The partnership seeks to overcome some of the limitations of AAV or lentiviral delivery (i.e. cargo size). Their only known competitor is Flagship Pioneering-backed Tessera Therapeutics.

Microfluidics startup Sphere Fluidics has received 2022 Europe Technology Innovation Leadership Award. The company has brought microfluidic pumps and lasers into fluorescence assays, as well as biochips that sort and pick out picoliter droplets, allowing for extreme miniaturisation.

Stem cell researcher Doug Melton has reunited with collaborators and yet friends at cystic fibrosis drugmaker Vertex Therapeutics.

Cambridge office and laboratory market reached over £1 billion, over 600% above the five-year average. Indicatively, overseas investors accounted for 52% of the investments.

Affimed wows American Association of Cancer Research attendees with partial phase 1 trial results for AFM13: from 19 lymphoma patients, AFM13 has put 17 of them into remission AFM13 is a bispecific MAb targeting CD30 and CD16A, thus bridging with NK cells and not with T cells. Affimed started by developing T cell-recruiting bispecifics. However, the area became hugely competitive and thus they pivoted to NK-cell engagers like AFM13.

More on bispecifics. AstraZeneca has signed a $25 million deal with Harbour BioMed on preclinical bispecific against CLDN18.2 and CD3. CLDN18.2 is expressed at the tight junctions and appears in 60% of gastric cancers. AstraZeneca joins the race, but Amgen, Astellas and BioNTech are ahead, at least in the development process.

Takeda spinout and single-asset company HilleVax has filled for $100 million IPO. Their norovax candidate has excelled in phase I and the company is now launching phase 2 in infants. The market for the shot could exceed $4 billion.

$1 billion-Antibiotic Microbial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund, backed by Pfizer, GSK and Bayer among others, has selected Adaptive Phage Therapeutics and Venatorx Pharmaceuticals to become its first beneficiaries. Adaptive Phage has developed a library of bacteriophages and has several therapies in phase1/2 for prosthetic and urinary infections and will incorporate funding as extended series B. Venatorx is further along the clinic process and theirantibiotic cefepime-taniborbactam achieved Phase 3 main goals last month.

“Universities need to see that 5% of a successful spinout is worth more than 30% of one that isn't”. Insightful article about one of the elephants in the room for British biotech: universities taking on average 50% equity of their spin-out companies.

And yet another layer of complexity to gene expression. Interesting story on rixosomes, a protein complex that helps to degrade RNA transcripts lingering around after gene expression ceases.

Bloomberg Quicktake 24 minutes video on how China may soon lead the biotech revolution.

Genetics Unzipped, the Genetics Society podcast, discuses exosomes as biological mailbags.

Best April Fools press release ever: **RA Capital Management** pivots to metaverse medicines: “To date, RA Capitalhas made zero investments in the metaverse—but as most life science companies never generate a profit, the team feels well-prepared to invest in metaverse companies that will never generate a profit either.”