One of the ba­sic lessons in sci­ence class is that mi­to­chon­dria act as the pow­er­house of the cell. But LU­CA Sci­ence, a Japan­ese biotech, is look­ing to take it a step fur­ther.

The com­pa­ny is look­ing to har­ness the pow­er of mi­to­chon­dria to even­tu­al­ly cre­ate ther­a­pies for or­gan and tis­sue re­pair, and on Mon­day it closed a $30.3 mil­lion Se­ries B. Helmed by Rick Tsai, a Mer­ck and Al­ler­gan vet, LU­CA aims to re­search the mi­to­chon­dria’s po­ten­tial in ob­stet­rics, res­pi­ra­to­ry, car­dio­vas­cu­lar, CNS, im­munol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy spaces.

Tsai ex­plains that the com­pa­ny us­es spe­cial mi­to­chon­dria that are dif­fer­ent from tra­di­tion­al meth­ods, as ex­tract­ed mi­to­chon­dria can be high­ly del­i­cate. As such, LU­CA has spent its time de­vel­op­ing a way to iso­late in­tact, func­tion­al mi­to­chon­dria. Tsai said that when the com­pa­ny’s mi­to­chon­dria are ex­tract­ed and thawed, the mem­brane po­ten­tial is still pre­served, al­low­ing for it to be ap­plied to fur­ther re­search and de­vel­oped in­to even­tu­al ther­a­pies.

Tsai not­ed that oth­er com­pa­nies and sci­en­tists work­ing in this field are fo­cused on us­ing the cur­rent­ly avail­able meth­ods for mi­to­chon­dria, main­ly as in­di­rect ap­proach­es to dis­ease treat­ment. What sets LU­CA apart, Tsai said, is how they ap­ply their mi­to­chon­dria for di­rect us­age.

“We can store it and then still main­tain the func­tion, so for the first time, we can ac­tu­al­ly use al­lo­gene­ic mi­to­chon­dria and make it off-the-shelf as the prod­uct,” he said. “This will open up doors for emer­gency sit­u­a­tions and many dif­fer­ent ther­a­pies and make it in­to like a bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­uct.”

Ac­cord­ing to Yoshikazu Tokuo­ka, LU­CA’s CFO, this Se­ries B will keep the com­pa­ny mov­ing for­ward for a while. Ex­ecs are aim­ing for an IPO in Japan around the mid­dle of 2024.

Tokuo­ka al­so not­ed that this round will give LU­CA a run­way of three years while the com­pa­ny es­tab­lish­es its CMC ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Tsai said that they’ll look to file an IND to­ward the end of 2023.

As for their man­u­fac­tur­ing build­out, the com­pa­ny opened its CMC re­search lab­o­ra­to­ry in Tokyo last month to es­tab­lish its man­u­fac­tur­ing process and as­say meth­ods. How­ev­er, Tsai al­so said that the com­pa­ny would be open to work­ing with a larg­er CD­MO to mass-pro­duce their prod­uct.

The com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly net­ted a $9.8 mil­lion Se­ries A and has a sub­sidiary in the UK to fo­cus on re­search col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford. LU­CA al­so formed re­search col­lab­o­ra­tions with sev­er­al Japan­ese uni­ver­si­ties and with Ky­owa Kirin.

Mon­day’s was co-led by Japan­ese VC firms DCI Part­ners, and Fast Track Ini­tia­tive, who pre­vi­ous­ly in­vest­ed in the com­pa­ny. Lon­don’s 4BIO Cap­i­tal, which has had a knack for in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in ad­vanced ther­a­pies, was al­so a co-leader in the round. One rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each VC will join LU­CA’s board. Oth­er con­tribut­ing in­vestors in the round in­clude Remiges Ven­tures, Nip­pon Ven­ture Cap­i­tal, Nis­say Cap­i­tal, Asahi Ka­sei Phar­ma, QB Cap­i­tal/NCB Ven­ture Cap­i­tal and SM­BC Ven­ture Cap­i­tal.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.