Rough­ly four and half years af­ter se­cur­ing $26.5 mil­lion in a Clarus Ven­tures-led Se­ries A, San Fran­cis­co biotech Ima­go Bio­Sciences has an­oth­er $40 mil­lion in the bank to de­vel­op its bone mar­row-fo­cused ther­a­py, cour­tesy a fi­nanc­ing round led by Omega Funds.

The pri­vate­ly-held drug de­vel­op­er is tar­get­ing the man­age­ment of pro­lif­er­a­tive dis­eases of the bone mar­row — in­clud­ing acute myeloid leukemia (AML), myelodys­plas­tic syn­drome, poly­cythemia ve­ra, myelofi­bro­sis and es­sen­tial throm­bo­cythemia — that trig­ger un­bri­dled bone mar­row cell growth, dri­ven by ge­net­ic mu­ta­tions.

Its lead drug IMG-7289 is de­signed to in­hib­it LSD1, an en­zyme reg­u­lat­ing cy­tokine ex­pres­sion that is con­sid­ered cru­cial for sus­tain­ing self-re­new­al in can­cer stem/prog­en­i­tor cells, par­tic­u­lar­ly neo­plas­tic bone mar­row cells. It is be­ing test­ed in a Phase II myelofi­bro­sis study, and last year com­plet­ed a Phase I AML/MDS study. The cap­i­tal in­jec­tion will be used to shep­herd the ex­per­i­men­tal drug through the com­ple­tion of Phase IIb stud­ies, the com­pa­ny said on Thurs­day.

The name Ima­go in­vokes the fi­nal and ful­ly de­vel­oped stage of an in­sect af­ter its meta­mor­pho­sis, and the com­pa­ny is hop­ing to do the same by trans­lat­ing sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry in­to new treat­ments.

Oth­er in­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ing in the round in­clude ex­ist­ing in­vestors Fra­zier Health­care Part­ners, Am­gen Ven­tures, and MRL Ven­tures Fund as well as High­Light Cap­i­tal, Phar­maron and Green­spring As­so­ci­ates. Omega Funds’ Di­na Chaya from is slat­ed to join Ima­go’s board.

An­oth­er com­pa­ny look­ing in­to the po­ten­tial of in­hibit­ing LSD1 is In­cyte $IN­CY, which is test­ing its drug IN­CB059872 for Ew­ing sar­co­ma and oth­er can­cers.

After making it clear that the US’ current monkeypox vaccine supply is insufficient, the FDA on Tuesday authorized a new route of administration that should increase the number of available doses by five-fold.

Regulators cleared Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine for intradermal injection in adults older than 18. Unlike subcutaneous injection — the current method by which vaccine is delivered under the skin — an intradermal jab goes directly into the skin. It’s believed that this method requires less vaccine, since the dermis is rich in dendritic cells which specialize in taking up foreign antigens and presenting them to the immune system, according to Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Over the past few years, the promise of blocking CD47 — a “don’t eat me” signal co-opted by cancer cells — has sent drugmakers big and small into a frenzy. But one biotech is now bowing out.

Zai Lab is deprioritizing ZL-1201, its CD47 inhibitor, scrapping plans for a Phase II trial. It will now “pursue out-licensing opportunities,” the company said in its Q2 update. The decision was based on a review of the competitive landscape, it added, without going into further details.

Less than a week after HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared monkeypox a national health emergency, reports have emerged that the US plans to extend its vaccine supply by opting for a different route of administration.

Officials are expected to call for intradermal injection of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccine — the only shot approved specifically for monkeypox in the US — as opposed to subcutaneous injection, unnamed sources told both the New York Times and Washington Post on Tuesday.