As a ven­ture part­ner at At­las, Saurabh Sa­ha gets to look over a whole range of pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams that come its way, in­clud­ing pro­posed drug can­di­dates that can be used to start a new biotech. And the one that re­al­ly grabbed his at­ten­tion is an au­toim­mune project that will now form the core work at a start­up called Delinia.

The fo­cus at Delinia is a nov­el cy­tokine that Sa­ha tells me has a re­al shot at “ex­pand­ing and po­ten­ti­at­ing” reg­u­la­to­ry T cells, or Tregs. There’s a long list of dis­eases trig­gered when the bal­ance of Tregs and T ef­fec­tor cells is dis­rupt­ed and the im­mune sys­tem starts to at­tack healthy tis­sue. By ex­pand­ing Tregs, mak­ing it more ac­tive, Sa­ha be­lieves that Delinia’s drug can re­store im­mune tol­er­ance and home­osta­sis, stop­ping the dis­ease.

“Of the hun­dreds (of pro­posed projects) I’ve seen,” says Sa­ha, “this is the most promis­ing in chang­ing the par­a­digm, in a way that’s very nat­ur­al.”

As of this morn­ing, the 4 full timers at Delinia have a $35 mil­lion start­up round to start mov­ing to the clin­ic in the sec­ond half of 2017. And Sa­ha says that is enough cash to get through one or two proof-of-con­cept stud­ies.

The com­pa­ny will now grow the staff, with the ex­ecs in Cam­bridge, MA and the re­search group near the sci­en­tif­ic source. Co-founder and the new chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer at Delinia, Jef­frey Greve, is cred­it­ed with much of the dis­cov­ery work for their cy­tokine. Com­pa­ny co-founder Michael Rosen­blum is the as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of der­ma­tol­ogy at the UCSF School of Med­i­cine.

The SAB al­so in­cludes UCSF’s Ab­ul Ab­bas and David Wof­sy as well as Har­vard’s Christophe Benoist and Jerome Ritz.

Delinia still hasn’t cho­sen its first tar­get, but the new CEO says there are sev­er­al to pick from, in­clud­ing lu­pus, Type 1 dis­eases and fi­brot­ic dis­eases like scle­ro­der­ma.

The round was co-led by Sofinno­va Part­ners and At­las Ven­ture. Hen­ri­jette Richter PhD, Part­ner at Sofinno­va Part­ners, and David Grayzel MD, Part­ner at At­las Ven­ture are found­ing board mem­bers.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.