Life sciences investors are being anything but shy as the end of 2021 draws near. Here are a few companies that are still seeing cash come in the door as December gets underway.
Life sciences investors are being anything but shy as the end of 2021 draws near. Here are a few companies that are still seeing cash come in the door as December gets underway.
Cyrus Biotechnology
Cyrus Biotechnology shows no signs of stopping as the year winds down. On Monday, the Seattle-based biotechnology firm announced that it successfully acquired Orthogonal Biologics and closed an $18 million Series B financing round.
The acquisition of Orthogonal, a University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign spin-out, allows Cyrus to become a software-driven, pre-clinical drug discovery firm.
“By merging our company with Cyrus we can create a unified biologics discovery platform, building on Cyrus’s years of software development and business relationships to create value across a range of indications where progress was previously impossible,” said Erik Procko, former CEO of Orthogonal Biologics.
The Series B round had a healthy number of investors including OrbiMed Advisors, Trinity Ventures, Agent Capital and more.
Nabla Bio
Boston-based Nabla Bio landed $11 million in a seed financing round co-led by Zetta Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures.
The company plans to use the funds to speed the development of its AI-first protein design platform, which combines protein language modeling with a novel high-throughput multiplex antibody assay technology.
“Our vision is to use AI tightly integrated with wet-lab experimentation to engineer multiple clinically essential and commercially enabling properties into next-generation antibody drugs and expand their reach over challenging targets,” said Frances Anastassacos, Ph.D., co-founder of Nabla Bio.
NanoMosaic
Tiger Gene-founded NanoMosaic started December with some extra cash in its pocket. On Monday, the company announced the closing of its $40.75 million Series A round.
NanoMosaic intends to use the funds to build the company’s infrastructure and advance its diagnostic development programs and application development efforts. One of the company’s goals is to break the bottleneck that exists in protein market interrogation.
“NanoMosaic places the future of proteomics in the hands of scientists: fully configurable, simple to run and ripe for additional application development,” said Anurag Kondapalli, principal with RA Capital. “We are proud to partner with a world-class technical team to help expand access to this powerful platform.”
AviadoBio
Last week, London-based AvaidoBio emerged with $80 million earned in a Series A round co-led by New Enterprise Associates and Monograph Capital.
The gene therapy company plans to use the monies to send its lead program to the clinic, while also advancing its preclinical assets and expanding its team. A couple of the areas AviadoBio is exploring include frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
“AviadoBio’s unique platform combines next-generation gene therapy design with deep neuroscience expertise and a novel neuroanatomy-led approach to drug delivery,” said Prof. Christopher Shaw, co-founder and chief scientific and clinical advisor of AviadoBio. “Precision micro dosing achieves extensive gene expression throughout the nervous system, maximizing the therapeutic potential for patients living with devastating neurological diseases.”
