Vic­to­ria Ri­chon’s team at Ri­bon Ther­a­peu­tics has been cruis­ing un­der the biotech radar for the past 3 years. But with a $65 mil­lion B round to dis­cuss with plans to move in­to the clin­ic, it’s time for a pub­lic dis­play on just what they’ve been work­ing on.

Over the past few years a whole group of play­ers has been ad­vanc­ing PARPs in­to the mar­ket for can­cer, throw­ing a mon­key wrench in a mech­a­nism cells use to re­pair dam­age. But while ri­vals stack up be­hind Lyn­parza from As­traZeneca and Mer­ck, Ri­bon is tak­ing it all one big step down the road.

Those pi­o­neer­ing PARPs on the mar­ket tar­get PARP1, but that’s just one of a broad fam­i­ly of 17 en­zymes. Ri­bon’s lead pro­gram goes af­ter PARP7, a dif­fer­ent pro­tein and a dif­fer­ent tar­get in this world, sim­i­lar­ly ac­ti­vat­ed by stress and cel­lu­lar re­sponse mech­a­nisms. And they have oth­er pro­grams com­ing up from be­hind.

“We look at our­selves as pi­o­neers,” Ri­chon, a Sanofi vet, tells me on be­half of the team of 26. Their PARP7 pro­gram is now be­ing steered to the clin­ic in search of proof-of-con­cept da­ta to back up their lab work. And as the tech­nol­o­gy has been sharp­ened, the CEO adds that they can move faster now in iden­ti­fy­ing which PARPs to use on par­tic­u­lar dis­ease tar­gets.

That pro­file has at­tract­ed a mix of cor­po­rate and strate­gic in­vestors to the B round, which brings their to­tal raised to $108 mil­lion, fol­low­ing the $43 mil­lion in Se­ries A cash gar­nered in 2015.

No­var­tis Ven­ture Fund led the round, with J&J In­no­va­tion and Cel­gene Cor­po­ra­tion jump­ing in along­side The Col­umn Group, Deer­field Man­age­ment, U.S. Ven­ture Part­ners, Os­age Uni­ver­si­ty Part­ners, Take­da Ven­tures and Eu­clid­ean Cap­i­tal.

Im­age: Vic­to­ria Ri­chon. HOTSPOT

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.