San Fran­cis­co-based Aeov­ian Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has banked $37 mil­lion in Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing to launch its mTORC1 in­hibitor in­to a proof-of-con­cept for what the com­pa­ny says is an undis­closed rare CNS dis­ease.

Linked to a num­ber of ag­ing and nu­tri­ent-sens­ing process­es, the mTOR path­way has typ­i­cal­ly been seen as a rich tar­get for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies hop­ing to make in­roads in lifes­pan/healthspan ex­ten­sion. The se­cre­cy be­hind the ‘undis­closed dis­ease’ is not un­usu­al in a field where re­search is of­ten paint­ed with the broad brush of ‘age-re­lat­ed dis­eases.’ Part of Aeov­ian’s IP comes from the Buck In­sti­tute in No­va­to, Cal­i­for­nia, an in­de­pen­dent re­search in­sti­tute ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to study­ing con­nec­tions be­tween ag­ing and chron­ic dis­ease.

The mech­a­nisms be­hind mTOR — the mam­malian tar­get of ra­pamycin — are not ful­ly un­der­stood, but re­searchers be­lieve it plays key roles in cell me­tab­o­lism, growth and sur­vival, point­ing to a role in tu­mor for­ma­tion and type 2 di­a­betes, among oth­ers.

ven­Bio Part­ners and Sofinno­va In­vest­ments co-led the round, who joined found­ing in­vestors Apol­lo Health Ven­tures and Evotec SE.

The world of radiopharmaceuticals has been heating up over the last few years, and Thursday saw another company focused on the field pull in a new nine-figure raise.

Germany’s ITM, or Isotopen Technologien München, scored a $109 million round of loan financing to push forward its precision oncology pipeline and fund late-stage development for its lead program. As part of the agreement, the loan will convert to shares in the event of future financial or corporate transactions, ITM said.

Francesco De Rubertis made no secret of IPO plans for Centessa, his 10-in-1 legacy play. Barely two months later, the S-1 is in.

The hot-off-the-press filing depicts the same grand vision that the longtime VC touted when he did the rounds in February: Take the asset-centric mindset that he’s been preaching at Medicxi over the years, and roll up a bunch of biotech upstarts, with unrelated risk profiles, into 1 pharma company that can carry on the development at scale.

As concerns rise around the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, global attention is increasingly turning to the little, 33-year-old, productless, bankruptcy-flirting biotech that could: Novavax.

In the now 16-month race to develop and deploy Covid-19 vaccines, Novavax has at times seemed like the pandemic’s most unsuspecting frontrunner and at times like an overhyped also-ran. Although they started the pandemic with only enough cash to last 6 months, they leveraged old connections and believers into $2 billion and emerged last summer with data experts said surpassed Pfizer and Moderna. They unveiled plans to quickly scale to 2 billion doses. Then they couldn’t even make enough material to run their US trial and watched four other companies beat them to the finish line.

The FDA wrapped up its inspection of Emergent’s troubled vaccine manufacturing plant in Baltimore on Tuesday, after halting production there on Monday. By Wednesday morning, the agency already released a series of scathing observations on the cross contamination, sanitary issues and lack of staff training that caused the contract manufacturer to dispose of millions of AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine doses.

Bayer first set roots in Berkeley back in 1974, when it was still operating as Miles Labs. The site has pumped out three hemophilia A treatments for distribution worldwide; but now, as the pharma continues its cell and gene therapy push, it has something bigger in mind.

Bayer is planning a 30-year revamp at the campus, which includes 918,000 square feet in new buildings and double the jobs, according to a report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.