Drug de­vel­op­ment is a glob­al busi­ness, but when it comes to rais­ing ven­ture cash, star­tups in Eu­rope and the US are of­ten op­er­at­ing on com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent scales.

Con­sid­er Alen­tis Ther­a­peu­tics, a biotech in­cu­bat­ed in Basel, Switzer­land that says it has found the “mas­ter switch” for a num­ber of ad­vanced liv­er dis­eases, from fi­bro­sis due to NASH to he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar car­ci­no­ma. The Se­ries A grant to­tal: $13.2 mil­lion (CHF 13.5 mil­lion).

Thomas Baumert

Founder Thomas Baumert was in Boston a few days be­fore the an­nounce­ment. With this kind of pro­file, he re­calls peo­ple telling him, “we prob­a­bly could eas­i­ly get 50 mil­lion in the Unit­ed States.”

But Baumert, whose decade-long re­search at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Stras­bourg formed the foun­da­tion of Alen­tis, is hap­py where he is. Be­tween his sci­en­tif­ic base in the French city and Basel, his small team of 4 have “the best of both worlds,” with ac­cess to both cut­ting edge trans­la­tion­al sci­ence and “fan­tas­tic in­fra­struc­ture” for run­ning a biotech busi­ness. Not to men­tion the cal­iber of the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vis­ers and ser­vice providers they reg­u­lar­ly work with, many of whom are No­var­tis or Roche alums.

Markus Ew­ert

CEO Markus Ew­ert — ex-No­var­tis staffer and for­mer CBO of Abl­ynx — adds that the cur­rent funds should last a cou­ple of years, tak­ing Alen­tis’s lead mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body through CMC de­vel­op­ment and some tox stud­ies.

Af­ter that, though, they will like­ly need $30 mil­lion to $35 mil­lion more in or­der to car­ry out sol­id clin­i­cal stud­ies. Part­ners with deep­er pock­ets are wel­come to pick up the tab af­ter proof-of-con­cept.

All the while, Alen­tis will con­tin­ue op­ti­miz­ing some oth­er com­pounds dis­cov­ered on its plat­form — a spe­cial cell cul­ture mod­el that cap­tures the cell cir­cuits and gene ex­pres­sion of pa­tients with late-stage liv­er dis­ease in a way that oth­ers haven’t been able to, ac­cord­ing to Bau­rmert — to beef up the pipeline. They are al­so in talks with big­ger play­ers who are in­ter­est­ed in uti­liz­ing the plat­form tech on their own projects, Ew­ert says.

He plans to dou­ble the head­count at the com­pa­ny, but in­tends to keep the full-time team rel­a­tive­ly small.

Bio­Med­Part­ners and BB Pure­os Bioven­tures — both Swiss VC funds — co-led the round and each sends a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the board. They were joined by BPI France (al­so join­ing the board), Schroder Ad­veq and the Ger­man High-Tech Grün­der­fonds.

The top career staff at the FDA has vowed not to let politics overrule science when looking at vaccine data this fall. But Alex Azar, who happens to be their boss’s boss, apparently won’t even give them a chance to stand in the way.

In a new memorandum issued Tuesday last week, the HHS chief stripped the FDA and other health agencies under his purview of their rule making ability, asserting all such power “is reserved to the Secretary.” Sheila Kaplan of the New York Times first obtained and reported the details of the September 15 bulletin.

Jeff Goldberg was getting acquainted with a brand new way to do corneal transplants when an even newer, even bolder idea hit him.

It was almost 10 years ago, and Goldberg was in his first faculty position at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami. Scientists had developed a new way to do cornea transplants where instead of sewing a whole donor cornea — a decades-old practice — they were just engrafting the inner layer of cells.

Siolta Therapeutics, a microbiome company targeting allergic diseases, raked in a $30 million Series B to develop its lead candidate, STMC-103H. The drug, which has been FDA fast-tracked, is headed for proof-of-concept trials, according to the company. Its various indications include allergic asthma, food allergies, atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, and allergy prevention.

The news comes just after the California-based biotech added a prominent biopharma veteran as an advisor: 20-year Gilead CEO John Martin. The biotech also gained Richard Shames as CMO, who came by way of Protagonist Therapeutics.

A federal committee that advises the CDC was expected to hold a vote Tuesday on a plan regarding the distribution for initial doses of approved Covid-19 vaccines. But that vote has been scrapped.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, won’t be voting until the committee members learn more about which vaccines become available first, the Wall Street Journal reported. The vote could potentially wait until a specific vaccine is authorized before recommending how to dole out the first doses.

President Donald Trump, who seems intent on announcing a Covid-19 vaccine before Election Day, could legally authorize a vaccine over the objections of experts, officials at the FDA and even vaccine manufacturers, who have pledged not to release any vaccine unless it’s proved safe and effective.

In podcasts, public forums, social media and medical journals, a growing number of prominent health leaders say they fear that Trump — who has repeatedly signaled his desire for the swift approval of a vaccine and his displeasure with perceived delays at the FDA — will take matters into his own hands, running roughshod over the usual regulatory process.

Flagship is building a big-name C-Suite at its new, $220 million merged biotech.

Repertoire Immune Medicines, which already boasts former Bioverativ chief John Cox as its CEO, announced yesterday that Anthony Coyle, the former Pfizer CSO and the founding CEO of Pandion, will join as their head of R&D.

“As we progress clinical trials for our multi-clonal T cell candidates in immuno-oncology, Tony’s deep expertise in cellular immunology and novel therapeutic development will help us achieve our vision of creating a new class of transformative medicines for patients,” Cox said in a statement.

Zai Lab is set to net more than $761 million from its secondary listing in Hong Kong after pricing the IPO at $72.51 (HKD$562) — just a hair below its Nasdaq closing price on Monday, Bloomberg and Nikkei Asian Review reported.

A pioneer in bringing Western drugs to China, co-founder and CEO Samantha Du has more than tripled Zai Lab’s market cap in the three years it’s been public in the US. The HKEX listing is designed to fund R&D and commercialization for the current portfolio while fueling new in-licensing pacts, the biotech wrote in a filing.