Af­ter start­ing up with a $12 mil­lion Se­ries A in 2019, Cal­i­for­nia out­fit AN2 Ther­a­peu­tics is­sued its first press re­lease in over 2 years — and its sec­ond ever: The ul­tra-qui­et biotech has raised an $80 mil­lion Se­ries B and added a pair of di­rec­tors to boot.

The biotech is head­ed by sev­er­al lead­ers from Ana­cor, which was bought out by Pfiz­er in 2016 for about $5.2 bil­lion. Er­ic Ea­som, for­mer head of Ana­cor’s R&D on ne­glect­ed dis­eases, is co-founder and CEO. Oth­er Ana­cor vets in­clude AN2’s chief de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer, CFO and head of bi­ol­o­gy.

Al­though on­ly an­nounced now, AN2 com­plet­ed the Se­ries B back in March. The fi­nanc­ing, led by RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment — sig­nal­ing a po­ten­tial IPO down the road — will help AN2 ad­vance its lead can­di­date epe­tra­bo­role, a once-dai­ly, oral in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al treat­ment for chron­ic, non-tu­ber­cu­lous my­cobac­te­r­i­al lung dis­ease (NTM).

NTM, a group of rare lung dis­eases, pri­mar­i­ly af­fects peo­ple with pre-ex­isit­ing con­di­tions such as cys­tic fi­bro­sis and CPOD. There are few good treat­ment op­tions.

What the ad­vance would look like, ac­cord­ing to AN2, is mov­ing late-stage clin­i­cal tri­als for­ward and pro­gress­ing the com­pa­ny’s broad­er pipeline of boron-based mol­e­cules.

Boron-based in­hibitors, ac­cord­ing to the biotech, can be high­ly se­lec­tive — and open the door to new tar­gets. There was some pi­o­neer­ing work done at Ana­cor on boron com­pounds known as fused boron het­e­ro­cyclic com­pounds.

AN2 al­so brought on Pa­tri­cia Mar­tin and Stephanie Wong as mem­bers of its board of di­rec­tors. Mar­tin — who spent more than two decades at Eli Lil­ly as the for­mer COO of Lil­ly Di­a­betes and Eli Lil­ly’s chief di­ver­si­ty of­fi­cer and chief al­liance of­fi­cer be­fore leav­ing in 2018 — has worked in strat­e­gy, fi­nance, clin­i­cal prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, hu­man re­sources, and in­vestor re­la­tions. Wong worked on the fi­nance side of biotech — spend­ing time at Kosan Bio­sciences, Acel­Rx, and Sci­Clone be­fore her cur­rent job as CFO at Calithera Bio­sciences.

Over the past three years, Endpoints News has spotlighted 60 women who have blazed trails and supercharged R&D across the biopharma world. And judging from the response we’ve received, to both our special reports and live events, telling their stories — including any obstacles they may have had to overcome — has inspired our readers in many different ways.

But change takes time, and the fact remains that women are still underrepresented at the upper ranks of the drug-making world.

The FDA is still wary about a trial testing a microbiome therapy in patients with steroid-resistant acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD).

A year after MaaT Pharma’s IND application in the US was first met with a clinical hold, the French biotech said the agency is maintaining the hold. The crux of the matter, MaaT suggested, has to do with the way it puts together its drug candidate, which is administered as an enema (i.e. an injection of fluid into the bowel).

Pfizer is launching its second-ever rebate program, this time for Panzyga, its treatment for a rare neurological disease of the peripheral nerves.

The program began last month, according to STAT which first reported the news, and offers a refund of out-of-pocket costs for patients who must discontinue their course before the fifth treatment for “clinical reasons.”

Panzyga was approved back in 2018 to treat primary immunodeficiency (PI) in patients two years and older and chronic immune thrombocytopenia (cITP) in adults. It has since picked up an indication in chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a condition that’s characterized by weakness of the arms or legs, tingling or numbness, and a loss of deep tendon reflexes, according to the NIH.

Endo International will likely be the next pharma company to file for bankruptcy under a mountain of opioid lawsuits.

The Dublin, Ireland-based company revealed in its Q2 results on Tuesday that it’s in talks with first lien creditors, and that “these negotiations will likely result in a pre-arranged filing under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code by Endo International plc and substantially all of its subsidiaries, which could occur imminently.”