It is raining seed rounds, friends. It might be that news are piling up as funds and founders go for the certainly deserved summer break. And yet, 9 (nine!) companies have just raised their initial rounds of funding. Meanwhile, MiroBio is becoming a clinical-stage company as they raise their series B. Sino Pharmaceuticals has laid eyes on European biotech markets, as they have set their invoX Pharma to acquire F-star Therapeutics. Chao, Nasdaq! The race for ATTRv-PN treatments is heating up as AstraZeneca is filling up for New Drug Application earlier than expected. Altos  has officially launched their research facility in Cambridge, Granta Park. Bezos, hear this: the lack of cycling path to get to Granta Park is what really makes me ageing fast, so it would be ideal if we could work on that low-hanging fruit first. Interesting reads and podcast section brings some exciting stuff about Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics and a conversation with the great Olivia Cavlan, who is now part of the Investment Committee in the brand new Cancer Research Horizon Seed Fund. Let’s dive in!

University of Oxford spinout MiroBio has raised $97 million series B. The round was led by Medicxi and participated by OrbiMed, Monograph Capital, Oxford Science Enterprises, Samsara BioCapital, SR One and Advent Life Sciences. MiroBio is developing checkpoint agonists to treat autoimmune diseases. The proceedings of the round will be used to bring their two lead antibody candidates (MB272 and MB151) into clinical trials and obtain safety and efficacy data. MB272 and MB151 are differentiated antibodies, precision-engineered checkpoint receptor agonists for B- and T-Lymphocyte Attenuator (BTLA) and Programmed cell Death protein 1 (PD-1) respectively. In addition, the funds will be used to acelerate their Receptor Selection and Targeting to Reinstate immune Equilibrium (I-ReSToRE) discovery platform, which leverages their proprietary Checkpoint Atlas™ of receptor expression and function as well as antibody discovery processes and bioinformatic tools. MiroBio was founded by Prof. Richard Cornall (Nuffield Professor of Clinical Medicine and Head of the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) at the University of Oxford) and Prof. Simon David (Professor of Molecular Immunology, specialised in mapping the surface of T-cells).

Wondr Medical has raised £12 million seed round. The financing was co-led by Advent Life Sciences and Sonder Capital, with participation from existing shareholders. The company was founded by Dr Justin Davies (CEO) in 2020. Wondr Medical is developing an encrypted and HIPAA compliant web/mobile software platform for healthcare users to share and discuss clinical information across the global healthcare system. Currently, the platform has more than 200,000 members.

University of Cambridge spinout Spirea has raised $3 million seed round. The financing was co-led by Johnathan Milner and Cambridge Enterprise, and participated by R42 Group, ACF Investors, o2h Ventures, Syndicate Room, and Cambridge Angles. Spirea is developing a new geenration of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics that allow for higher payloads and better specificity within the targeted tumour cell. Spirea was founded by Dr Myriam Ouberai(CEO) building up on her research at the Nanoscience Centre at Cambridge. The proceedings of the round will allow to set up the company pipeline with a focus on hard-to-treat cancers, and establish strategic partnerships.

University of Cambridge spinout Psyomics has raised £2.4 million in funding. The round was led by Parkwalk Advisors and participated by BGF, Martlet Capital, Meltwind, Newable Ventures and others. Psyomics is building Censeo, a smartphone app that aims to replicate face-to-face psychiatric assessment and serve as a support tool to in-person medical appointments. The company has already started projects within NHS treatment providers.

London-based Bio-Sep has raised $1.7 million seed round. The financing was co-led by the London Business School’s Enterprise 100 Club and ACF Investors, and participated by an undisclosed hedge fund focused on clean energy. The company was founded by Adrian Black and Miranda Lindsay-Fyn and is aiming to convert sawdust into biosourced chemicals that can be used in bio-based materials. The proceedings of the round will be used to recruit staff and design the first scaled-up commercial biorefinery.

Edimburgh-based Cytomos has raised an additional £1.6 million to their seed round. The extended round was led by previous investor Archangels, as well as Scottish Enterprise and the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund, Old College Capital. The proceedings of the round will be used to continue developing its cell analysis platform Cytomos Dielectric Spectroscopy (CDS), for which the company was granted key IP in the US. CDS is a full-stack, single-cell resolution analysis technology, spanning integrated sensors through to machine learning.

Cambridge-based digital health startup Boutros Bear has raised £1.5 million seed funding and is looking to raise a maximum additional £450,000 by the end of summer. Current investors include Meltwind, Syndicate Room, Amadeus Capital Partners, as well as various Cambridge angels and members of Cambridge Capital Group. Boutros Bear is a B2B hybrid digital health company specialising in chronic illness rehabilitation programmes for employees.

Booby Biome has closed the second tranche of their seed funding round. The round led by Venrex Investment Management and participated by Discovery Park and Simon Galbraith totalled £1.3 million. Booby Biome is developing breast milk-derived live biotherapeutic products for infants with compromised microbiomes.

Cambridge-based Optibrium has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kester Capital. The funding follows Kester’s initial investment in 2021 upon demonstrated ARR growth in excess of 25% for the last 3 years. Optibrium is developing drug discovery software computer-aided drug discovery and more than 170 organisations worldwide are currently deploying their software. Its lead product StarDrop is a suite of integrated software for small molecule design, optimisation, and data analysis.

Queen’s University Belfast spinout Sonrai Analytics has raised £2.175 million seed round. The financing was led by Forward Partners and participated by existing institutional investors Techstar Ventures, Co-Fund NI (managed by Clarendon Fund Managers), QUBIS, and several angel investors. The company was founded in 2018 by Dr Darragh McArt and Dr Deva Senevirathne and is developing AI medical software that can identify biomarkers, extract information and build algorithms around. The proceedings of the round will be used to expand operations and target companies globally to translate precision medicine and multi-omics data into personalised diagnostic tools and treatments.

Cancer Research Horizons has launched a £15 million Seed Fund to bridge the gap between academic ideas and cutting edge therapies. The fund will invest in treatments, diagnostics and medical devices reaching cancer patients at validation, pre-seed and seed stage. The fund can invest up to £500,000 per project. The investment committee is formed by Vishal Gulati, Deboray Harland, Andy Richards, Olivia Cavlan, Alex Badamchi-Zadeh and Tony Hickson.

Manchester-based Praetura Ventures has raised further £5 million funding commitment from British Business Investments, the UK-government-owned development bank, as part of the Regional Angels Program. Praetura has recently launched a £20 million Life Science Fund with capacity to invest between £50,000 and £2 million in biotech innovation in the North West of England.

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult) and the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) have entered a collaboration agreement to accelerate the development of adeno-associated virus (AAV) based gene therapies for dementia. CGT Catapult will work with UK-based academic institutions, create development plans for each project and eventually prepare assets for early trials or further investment.

NRG Therepeutics and Domainex have announced a one-year collaboration agreement for developing an integrated lead optimisation programme. The aim is optimising the pharmaceutical properties of novel small-molecule inhibitors for the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP), and ultimately nominating a pre-clinical candidate for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease or moto neuron disease (MND). The mPTP is a transmembrane channel located in the mitochondrial inner membrane, whose function is essential for cell signalling and regulated cell death. Preclinical models of Parkinson have shown inhibition of mPTP in brain cells can be neuroprotective. NRG Therapeutics, a neuroscience startup targeting mitochondrial dysfunction, will potentially invest over £1 million in the project, as part of their early stage Biomedical Catalyst award. Domainex will provide lead optimization services

OpenFold has been officially launched. It is a project of the nonprofit Open Molecular Software Foundation and supported by Amazon Web Services Open Data Sponsorship Program, which hosts OpenFreeEnergy and OpenForcefield too. The consortium hopes to improve on AlphaFold2’s accuracy.

University of Oxford and Pasteur Institute enter partnership agreement looking at antimicrobial resistance (AMR). the partnership involves exchange of PhD students between the academic universities. The aim is to discover clinical probes to gain better understanding of the AMR problem and find new therapeutic leads. The partnership will fund cutting edge projects at the interface of chemistry and biology related to AMR. Details of the program can be found here.

Non-profit Nucleate has announced its expansion to Switzerland, France, US and indeed our favourite child: the United Kingdom. The expansion follows the latest cycle of Nucleate’s Activator, whose alumni have raised over $170 million in funding since the inaugural class four years ago. The Activator program is supported by Alnylam, Genentech, Pillar VC, Schmidt Futures, Alexandria LaunchLabs, Benchling, Emerald Cloud Labs, Latch Bio, and Morrison & Foerster.

Cambridge-based Martlet Capital is hiring an Investment Manager for the Life Sciences area. Martlet Capital is a pre-seed and seed stage investor in deep tech, sustainability and life science startups such as Axol, Kalium Health, Pharmenable, Psyomics, Qkine and Xampla, among others. The venture capital firm was launched in 2011 and has invested in over 65 companies. Deadline: 15/7/2022.

Dunad Therapeutics has appointed Dr Pearl Huang as CEO. Dr Huang is a senior biotech leader: in 2001 she was appointed Vice President of Microbiology, Musculoskeletal and Proliferative Disease Center for Excellence in Drug Discovery at GSK, and then moved to Vice President of the oncology franchaise integrator at Merck. Among other senior roles in pharma, she co-founded BeiGene and became CEO of Flagship Pioneering’s Cygnal Therapeutics in 2019 (current Sonata Therapeutics). Novartis-backed Dunad Therapeutics is a drug development biotech startup focused on protein-degrading drugs that can be taken orally and that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

Congenica has appointed Robert Denison as CEO. Denison joined the company as Chief Information Officer in 2019 to lead the core technology unit and played a key role in raising $50 million series C. Congenica is a digital health company leveraging their proprietary diagnostic decision platform for genomic data and precision medicine.

Artios Pharma has appointed Samantha Truex, MBA as Independent Board Director. Samantha Truex is the Chief Executive Officer at Upstream Bio and has held leadership roles at Quench Bio, Synlogic and Padlock Therapeutics. Artios is a clinical-stage biotech company developing of novel small molecule that target the DNA damage response (DDR).

Altos Labs, the US-UK cellular rejuvenation technology specialist, has officially opened its new facilities for its Cambridge Institute of Science – at Granta Park. The site is led by Wolf Reik and will be home of leading scientist such as Manuel Serrano, Giovanna Mallucci or Robin Franklin.

F-star Therapeutics (NASDAQ:FSTX) to be acquired by invoX Pharma, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sino Biopharmaceuticals (HKEX 1177 HK). The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2022 and values F-star at $161 million. invoX has agreed to pay $7.12 per share. F-star leveraged modular antibody technology. Their proprietary technology uses tetravalent bispecific antibodies enabling simultaneous targeting of two different antigens. The company ha four programs in clinic, three based on the tetravalent format and one STING agonist. invoX was established in 2021 in the UK and is focused on research and development activities outside of China.

Oxford based Vaccitech’s (NASDAQ: VACC) therapy for chronic hepatitis B has shownpromising results in Phase 1b/2a. The therapy (VTP-300) has shown sustained reductions of Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in both monotherapy and in combination with single low dose of nivolumab (anti PD-1). 55 patients have been enrolled, and no concerning safety signals have been reported. VTP-300 is an immunotherapy, dosed in a prime-boost regimen whereby the immune system is primed with a modified adenovirus (ChAdOx1) and boosted with a modified pox virus (MVA). Vaccitech co-invented a COVID-19 vaccine with the University of Oxford, licensed worldwide to AstraZeneca through Oxford University Innovation.

The race for the a hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloid polyneuropathy (ATTRv-PN) treatment gets head to head. Back in December 2021, Astrazeneca cashed out $200 million upfront and $£3.4 billion in milestones tied to sales to Ionis Pharmaceuticals for eplontersen, a clinical candidate for hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloid polyneuropathy (ATTRv-PN). Now, the British pharma is going to fill for New Drug Application earlier than expected based on positive data from phase 3 interim analysis. If granted, eplotersen will compete with Alnylam’s Amvuttra, which got FDA approval only three weeks ago, an RNAi therapeutic, dosed every 3 months which halted or reversed disease in 50% of the patients enrolled in phase 3 trial. How much of the $3.4 billion Ionis is going to see will depend on the success on amyloid transthyretin cardiomyopathy, a form of ATTR. If it is true the opportunity is larger for the cardiomiopathy, the competitions is even fiercer: Vyndaqel and Vyndamax from Pfizer, Alnylam’s Onpattro (ph3) and vutrisiran, and BridgeBio Pharma’s acoramidis.

The UK Government is collaborating with Moderna to build the country’s first manufacturing centre for mRNA vaccines. The centre will be located at the “Golden Triangle” (for context, the same ‘’triangle’’ the Government was going to deprioritise only a few months ago). The 10-year deal includes manufacturing up to 250 million doses per year and working together in various research and development projects.

Ladies and gentleman, Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics. If authorised in early 2023, Vertex’s Exa-Cel will be the first CRISPR-based gene editing treatment to be approved for public use in the United States. US’s first CRISPR trial is still nearly 100% effective 3 years on. The trial focused on two blood diseases: beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. 75 patients were treated, 44 suffered from transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT) and 31 with severe sickle cell disease (SCD). 42/44 patients with TDT were did not need more blood transfusions and were essentially cured. The remaining 2 still required blood transfusions but these were 75-89% lower in transfusion volumes. All 31 SCD patients were also free of disease symptoms at long-term follow-up. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Exa-Cel a Fast Track designation. Vertex hopes to submit Exa-Cel to the FDA for market approval by the end of 2022.

University College London generates £10 billion a year for the British economy, comparable to organising the Olympics every year.

Physicians Off The Beaten Path has interviewed Olivia Cavlan, MD, Chief Corporate Development and Strategy Officer at Alchemab Therapeutics.

The biotech industry is suffering one of the worst downturns in history. The latest manifestation of things going to the dogs is pressure from some investors for companies to liquidate and return cash on their balance sheet to shareholders. Now, there are roughly 200 biotechs trading at valuations below cash levels and there is a case for forcing liquidations, let’s just hope it does not end with the thankfully remaining confident in the markets.