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.

Blue­bird bio $BLUE has un­veiled its price for the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo (Lenti­Glo­bin), which came as a big sur­prise. And it wasn’t the on­ly un­ex­pect­ed twist in to­day’s sto­ry.

With some an­a­lysts bet­ting on a $900,000 price for the β-tha­lassemia treat­ment in Eu­rope, where reg­u­la­tors pro­vid­ed a con­di­tion­al ear­ly OK, blue­bird CEO Nick Leschly said Fri­day morn­ing that the pa­tients who are suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with their drug over 5 years will be charged twice that — $1.8 mil­lion — on the con­ti­nent. That makes this drug the sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py on the plan­et, just be­hind No­var­tis’ new­ly ap­proved Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion, with an­a­lysts still wait­ing to see what kind of pre­mi­um can be had in the US.

As ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and ma­chine learn­ing loom ever larg­er in drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment, a biotech op­er­at­ing at the “nexus” of tech­nol­o­gy and neu­ro­sciences has cashed in with $76 mil­lion in fresh fi­nanc­ing.

The big idea at Black­Thorn Ther­a­peu­tics is to do for neu­robe­hav­ioral dis­or­ders what ge­net­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed ther­a­py has done for on­col­o­gy: Re­de­fine pa­tient pop­u­la­tions by the un­der­ly­ing bi­ol­o­gy — dys­reg­u­lat­ed brain cir­cuits, or neu­rotypes — in­stead of symp­toms, there­by find­ing the pa­tients who are most like­ly to ben­e­fit at en­roll­ment phase.

Em­bat­tled UK fund man­ag­er Neil Wood­ford — who has con­tro­ver­sial­ly blocked in­vestors from pulling out from his flag­ship fund to stem the blood­let­ting, af­ter a slew of dis­ap­point­ed in­vestors fled fol­low­ing a se­ries of sour bets — is now pay­ing the price for his ac­tions via an in­vestor ex­o­dus on an­oth­er fund.

Har­g­reaves Lans­down, which has in the past sold and pro­mot­ed the Wood­ford funds via its re­tail in­vest­ment plat­form, has re­port­ed­ly with­drawn £45 mil­lion — its en­tire po­si­tion — from the in­vest­ment man­ag­er’s In­come Fo­cus Fund.

These days just about every biotech se­ri­ous about glob­al de­vel­op­ment — and not just com­mer­cial­iza­tion — has a Chi­na strat­e­gy. Tes­sa Ther­a­peu­tics, a Bay­lor as­so­ci­at­ed out­fit based out of Sin­ga­pore, is no ex­cep­tion.

Tak­ing a page out of the CAR-T pi­o­neers’ play­book, Tes­sa is es­tab­lish­ing a joint ven­ture with Chi­na-Sin­ga­pore Guangzhou Knowl­edge City, which is ini­tial­ly putting down $40 mil­lion for a 13% stake with $40 mil­lion more to come in a sec­ond stage. The biotech, which now re­tains an 87% con­trol, is al­so rolling out its own con­tri­bu­tions in two phas­es, start­ing with $20 mil­lion and all its tech­nol­o­gy li­cense rights for Chi­na.

Re­gen­eron’s close­ly-watched bis­pe­cif­ic con­tin­ues to ring up high re­sponse rates

Re­gen­eron’s high-pro­file bis­pe­cif­ic REGN1979 is back in the spot­light at the Eu­ro­pean Hema­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic con­fab. And while the stel­lar num­bers we saw at ASH have erod­ed some­what as more blood can­cer pa­tients are eval­u­at­ed, the re­sponse rates for this CD3/CD20 drug re­main high.

A to­tal of 13 out of 14 fol­lic­u­lar lym­phomas re­spond­ed to the drug, a 93% ORR, down from 100% at the last read­out. In 10 out of 14, there was a com­plete re­sponse. In dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma the re­sponse rate was 57% among pa­tients treat­ed at the 80 mg to 160 mg dose range. They were all com­plete re­spons­es. And 2 of these Cars were for pa­tients who had failed CAR-T ther­a­py.