Big players on the eye diseases space have emerged this week. The first anti-VEGF inventors have set up EyeBio and received funding from SV Health Investors. Meanwhile, former SVP and Global Head of Ophthalmology at Bayerlaunched Complement Tx. Good news for CRISPR-base therapies, excellent news for CAR-T cell therapies. A London-based VC firm headed by ex-a16z investor raised $150 million fund. In regards to the CRISPR patent case, the grass remains to look greener on the other side for UC Berkeley & Co.

EyeBio raised $65 million Series A and rejoins succesful team from Eyetech Pharmaceuticals. The round was led by SV Health Investors and seconded by Jeito Capital, Samsara Capital and MRL Ventures. The management team is formed by Roche veteran David Guyer (CEO) and Anthony Adamis (Advisory Board Chairman). They developed the first anti-VEGF 20 years ago and aim to disrupt eye drug market.

University of Cambridge spin-out Semarion raised $2.9 million seed funding to support commercial development of SemaCytes, cell assaying platform, and team expansion. Parkwalk Advisor led the investment round, with University of Cambridge Seed Fund, Marlet Capital and other angel investors.

London-based startup Automata raised $50 million Series B funding. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, and backed by Hummingbird, Latitude Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Isomer Capital and In-Q-Tel. The funding will boost Automata Labs system, which provides automation in life sciences and has been utilised by the NHS.

St-Andrews-based clinical stage Pneumagen raised £3.8 million funding to advance manufacturing of Neumifil, a carbohydrate binding molecule that aims to stop viral infection at the onset (Phase I). The financing round was co-led by Thairm Bio, Scottish Enterprise, and other existing investors.

Newcastle University spin-out Atelerix raises £425,000 seed funding to improve and commercialise their cells and tissue preservation technology. The round has been led by several angel investors, Innovate UK and Fund Her North.

Livingstone-based biotech Valneva raised $27 million grant from Scottish Enterprise for expanding its COVID-19 manufacturing facility. Valneva has $1.6 billion worth supply deal with UK.

SV Health Investors managing partner Kate Bingham to chair EyeBio. Bingham commented on biotech companies going public but have not yet begun human trials.

London investment firm Backed raised €150 million fund to invest in biotech (Hoxton Farms, Lab Genius, Ochre Bio, etc) and crypto (Thought Machine, Hutch, etc). Their LPs include five major institutions both public (Groupe Bruxelles Lambert) and private (Wilshire Associates).

Illumina Accelerator Genomics Startup Fund is accepting applications for the new funding cycle.

Emerging from stealth mode: Complement Therapeutics raised $5.7 million seed funding to tackle complement related diseases, starting from untreatable eye diseases. The round was led by Forbion and BioGeneration Ventures (BGV). The company has appointed Dr. Rafiq Hasan as CEO (ex-Global Head of Ophtalmology and SVP at Bayer, ex-Eylea), and Dr. John Ford as independent director (Metrion Biosciences co-owner).

Broken String Biosciences expanded laboratory facilities to Chesterford Research Park, strengthening the Cambridge biotech cluster. The company, an Illumina Accelerator graduate, is leveraging novel genomic sequencing using its proprietary technology INDUCE-seq.

RevoluGen appointed Dr. Annalisa Jenkins, MBBS, FRCP, as Chair of the Board of Directors. RevoluGen’s proprietary High-Molecular Weight DNA extraction technology aims to solve key limitations for DNA sequencing platforms.

Stevenage-based drug discovery company Myricx Pharma announced Senior Team expansion: Zahid Bashir MB, MSc(CMO), Richard Ruttler, PhD (Head of Biology), Francesco Falciani, PhD (Head of Bioinformatics).

Former Novartis VP Brent Warner became Poseida Therapeutics President for the Gene Therapy division.

FDA approved 2nd BCMA CAR-T therapy in history. **Janssen** and Legend Biotech have obtained full clearance for Cilta-cel (Carvykti), a new CART-T therapy for multiple myeloma. BMS/Abecma, its sole competitor showed a 73% overall response rate, 33% complete response rate, and 8.8-month median progression-free survival (median follow-up of 15.4 months). In contrast, Jannsen/Legend Biotech reported 95-98% overall response, 83% complete response, and 2 year progression-free survival (median follow up of 22 months). The therapy will be priced at $465,000, higher than Abecma’s.

What a week in the life of Intellia. Good news for in vivo gene editing. Intellia & Regeneron announced an update on NTLA-2001 (PhI), a CRISPR therapy for Transthyretin amyloidosis. The results showed deep and sustained reduction in serum transtyretin protein (TTR) (86-93% mean reduction from 2-12 months across 6 patients, no liver AEs, or other major AEs).

Meanwhile, UC Berkeley lose CRISPR patent case, thus invalidating patent rights granted to gene editing companies, such CRISPR Therapeutics and... Intellia. Time to renegotiate, but this time there will be more to give away. As for CVC (i.e. UC Berkeley), ‘UC’s claims are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C §102(g)’. In other words: Zhang did it first.

AstraZeneca & Daiichi unlocked a potential blockbuster market in new trial win for HER2-low metastatic breast cancer. These account for 55% of primary breast cancers. Enhertu, an HER2-targeted antibody-drug conjugate, showed to be better at blocking tumor progression.

GlaxoSmithKline revealed the name of their brand new consumer health unit: Haleon. The spin off will take place mid-2022.

tRNA therapies, with Lovisa Afzelius (founding CEO Cogen Immune Medicines & SVP of Strategy and Operations at Flagship Pioneering) and Theonie Anastassidis (co-founder and CIO, Alltrna) - Biotech 2050 Podcast.

On Illumina and Grail. Merger arbitrage: busted rocket deal shows hedge funds the opportunity in antitrust risk.

The shadow of SPACs is elongated, especially for Jason Meyenburg.

Are they really? Europe’s term sheets are getting even more founder-friendly.