A day af­ter Eli Lil­ly inked a $1 bil­lion-plus deal to part­ner with a qui­et RNA edit­ing start­up, a new play­er has emerged to turn up the vol­ume.

ADARx Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals un­cloaked on Thurs­day with a $75 mil­lion Se­ries B round to ush­er its RNA pro­grams in­to the clin­ic. The San Diego-based biotech was found­ed in 2019 to dis­cov­er ther­a­pies that pre­cise­ly tar­get and ed­it sin­gle-point mu­ta­tions on RNA tran­scripts.

Un­like gene edit­ing, which looks to di­rect­ly — and per­ma­nent­ly – al­ter DNA, the goal of RNA edit­ing is to in­ter­cept the bro­ken mes­sages sent out by the DNA of pa­tients with cer­tain dis­eases and cor­rect it be­fore it gets turned in­to pro­teins. To do so, sci­en­tists are ex­ploit­ing a nat­u­ral­ly oc­cur­ring en­zyme called ADAR, or adeno­sine deam­i­nas­es act­ing on RNA.

ADARx’s first edit­ing pro­gram is be­ing de­vel­oped for Al­pha-1 an­tit­rypsin de­fi­cien­cy (AAT de­fi­cien­cy), an in­her­it­ed con­di­tion in which AAT, a pro­tein that pro­tects the lungs, isn’t the cor­rect shape and gets stuck in the liv­er where it’s pro­duced. Pa­tients with AAT de­fi­cien­cy are at an in­creased risk for both lung and liv­er dis­ease.

The team is helmed by Zhen Li, who led siR­NA de­vel­op­ment at Mer­ck be­fore tak­ing the se­nior VP role at Ar­row­head Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in 2014. Rui Zhu, a for­mer Ar­row­head col­league, al­so hopped on board as VP of R&D.

“We are ex­cit­ed that our RNA base edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy could give rise to a sig­nif­i­cant pipeline of high­ly ef­fec­tive ther­a­peu­tics,” Li said in a state­ment, adding that the com­pa­ny is al­so work­ing on tech for in­hi­bi­tion, degra­da­tion and de­liv­ery across a range of ge­net­ic, car­diometa­bol­ic and cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem dis­eases.

The RNA edit­ing space is heat­ing up, with Roche tee­ing up a $3 bil­lion-plus deal for Shape’s RNA edit­ing plat­form back in Au­gust. The deal came on the heels of Shape’s $112 mil­lion Se­ries B round in Ju­ly, with Roche hop­ing to dis­cov­er po­ten­tial “one-time” cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s and oth­er rare dis­eases. And just yes­ter­day, Eli Lil­ly put down $50 mil­lion up­front and $1.25 bil­lion in biobucks for ac­cess to five RNA edit­ing can­di­dates from the Dutch biotech Pro­QR Ther­a­peu­tics.

“Or­biMed is pleased to con­tin­ue to back Zhen Li and her team in the cre­ation of an ex­cit­ing oligonu­cleotide-based drug com­pa­ny, which is cre­at­ing new treat­ment modal­i­ties,” said Carl Gor­don, found­ing part­ner at Or­biMed, which co-led ADARx’s Se­ries B round along with SR One Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. Sirona Cap­i­tal and Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures al­so chipped in.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.

Biopharma’s resident antibody-drug conjugate expert Seagen has scored a clutch of oncology approvals in recent years, finding gold in what are known as “third-gen” ADCs. Now, another of their partnered conjugates is ready for prime time.

The FDA on Monday handed an accelerated approval to Seagen and Genmab’s Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv, or “TV”) in second-line patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who previously progressed after chemotherapy rather than PD-(L)1 systemic therapy, the companies said in a release.

Illumina Ventures closed off its second investment fund with a total commitment of $325 million, offering fresh fuel to back a slate of startups that have already included a smorgasbord of companies, covering everything from diagnostics to biotech drug development and genomics.

Fund II brings the total investment under Illumina Ventures’ oversight to $560 million, which has been focused on early-stage companies. And it has a transatlantic portfolio that includes SQZ, Twist and Encoded Therapeutics.