The de­cen­tral­ized clin­i­cal tri­al in­dus­try went through a huge boom dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic as biotechs and Big Phar­ma com­pa­nies alike were forced to shift gears. Look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on that mo­men­tum, a San Fran­cis­co start­up is rais­ing funds to en­sure clos­er part­ner­ships with the com­mu­ni­ties DCTs serve.

Cure­base pulled to­geth­er a $40 mil­lion Se­ries B on Thurs­day, rough­ly 13 months af­ter clos­ing its Se­ries A. While on the sur­face this may seem like an­oth­er DTC com­pa­ny, CEO Tom Lem­berg tells End­points News the com­pa­ny is look­ing to sep­a­rate it­self from the pack by go­ing straight to the com­mu­ni­ty to bring greater di­ver­si­ty to clin­i­cal tri­als.

What sets Cure­base apart from most com­pa­nies in the DCT space, Lem­berg says, is the com­pa­ny ac­tive­ly seeks to part­ner with com­mu­ni­ty doc­tors. Lem­burg em­pha­sized that the com­pa­ny has part­nered with around 100 com­mu­ni­ty physi­cians, such as pri­ma­ry care doc­tors, ur­gent care sites, test­ing sites and spe­cial­ists through their op­er­at­ing sys­tem.

“We would lever­age the com­mu­ni­ty sites that are in those com­mu­ni­ties, we would lever­age dig­i­tal cam­paigns to reach pa­tients where we’re able to reach that di­verse pop­u­la­tion and we’re not lim­it­ed by peo­ple who can dri­ve in­to a few elite re­search cen­ters,” Lem­berg said.

Lem­berg is a life­long soft­ware en­gi­neer and un­der­grad­u­ate in com­put­er sci­ence at Har­vard. He be­came in­vest­ed in health­care bi­ol­o­gy and pas­sion­ate about tak­ing his tech­nol­o­gy back­ground to health­care, spawn­ing the Cure­base ef­fort.

The com­pa­ny has con­tin­ued to scale up and it now has over 120 peo­ple on staff, work­ing with sev­en dif­fer­ent pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­nies to run in­ter­ven­tion­al drug tri­als. Cure­base se­cured a $15 mil­lion Se­ries A last April, and Thurs­day’s round was led by In­dus­try Ven­tures and in­clud­ed new in­vestors Acrew Cap­i­tal, World In­no­va­tion Lab and Pos­i­tive Sum.

Ex­ist­ing in­vestors were GGV Cap­i­tal, which led their Se­ries A, Bold Cap­i­tal and Xfund. The round al­so in­clud­ed an in­vest­ment from Gilead to deep­en the ex­ist­ing part­ner­ship with Cure­base on im­ple­ment­ing DCT and hy­brid ca­pa­bil­i­ties in tri­als.

“We did our Se­ries B not be­cause we were run­ning out of cash, but be­cause we want­ed to ac­cel­er­ate our growth. We have re­al­ly am­bi­tious goals in terms of in­vest­ing in our soft­ware plat­form, con­tin­u­ing to ab­solute­ly in­vest in an amaz­ing pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence,” Lem­berg said. “We want to ag­gres­sive­ly grow our site, op­er­at­ing sys­tem and site net­work to be able to reach more pa­tients in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Apart from look­ing to scale up its clin­i­cal op­er­a­tions ef­forts and soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, the com­pa­ny is look­ing to go more glob­al. Cure­base is cur­rent­ly in four coun­tries, but Lem­berg said he would like to grow that to 10. The com­pa­ny’s ser­vices are avail­able in three lan­guages but would al­so like to of­fer them in 10 lan­guages by the end of the year.

Vanda Pharmaceuticals is making a name for itself, at least in terms of suing the FDA.

The DC-headquartered firm on Monday filed its latest suit against the agency, with the company raising concerns over the FDA’s failure to grant a fast track designation for Vanda’s potential chronic digestive disorder drug tradipitant, which is a neurokinin 1 receptor antagonist.

Specifically, Vanda said FDA’s “essential point” in its one-page denial letter on the designation pointed to “the lack of necessary safety data,” which was “inconsistent with the criteria for … Fast Track designation.”

Pfizer has agreed to pay $290,000 to settle allegations of questionable copay coupon practices in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Vermont from 2014 to 2018.

While the company has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, Pfizer has agreed to issue restitution checks to about 5,000 consumers.

A Pfizer spokesperson said the company has “enhanced its co-pay coupons to alleviate the concerns raised by states and agreed to a $30,000 payment to each.”

A judge in Delaware has ruled against Astellas Pharma and Gilead in a long-running patent case over Pfizer-onwed Hospira’s generic version of Lexiscan.

The case kicked off in 2018, after Hospira submitted an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for approval to market a generic version of Gilead’s Lexiscan. The drug is used in myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), a type of nuclear stress test.