→ Zen­tal­is Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals just nabbed an $85 mil­lion round from a syn­di­cate that in­cludes Ma­trix Cap­i­tal, Viking Glob­al In­vestors, Red­mile Group, Far­al­lon Cap­i­tal, Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors, Sur­vey­or Cap­i­tal and Even­tide As­set Man­age­ment. Their lead drug is ZN-c5, which is cur­rent­ly in Phase I/II tri­als. The biotech de­scribes that drug as a “po­ten­tial best-in-class oral Se­lec­tive Es­tro­gen Re­cep­tor De­grad­er for es­tro­gen re­cep­tor-pos­i­tive, HER2-neg­a­tive (ER+/ HER2-) breast can­cer.”

Zen­tal­is scored a part­ner­ship with Pfiz­er last year that match­es their CDK 4/6 Ibrance with their ear­ly-stage drug. The C round brings Zen­tal­is’s to­tal take to $147 mil­lion.

→ Der­ma­tol­ogy com­pa­ny Gal­der­ma, which months ago se­cured the ser­vices of for­mer Shire chief Flem­ming Ørn­skov as CEO, on Mon­day scored the FDA’s break­through sta­tus for nemolizum­ab, a ther­a­py un­der de­vel­op­ment to treat pru­ri­tus as­so­ci­at­ed with pruri­go nodu­laris, a rare chron­ic skin con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by thick skin nod­ules cov­er­ing large body ar­eas. 

→ Months af­ter scor­ing $56 mil­lion in fresh fund­ing, UK-based Healx is shar­ing its AI-based drug dis­cov­ery plat­form with Boehringer In­gel­heim, to help the Ger­man drug­mak­er ex­plore new in­di­ca­tions for the ex­ist­ing as­sets in its ar­se­nal.

→ Ger­many’s Al­giax Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has gar­nered a €5.5 mil­lion round. The biotech is fo­cused on the de­vel­op­ment of GA­BA(a) re­cep­tor mod­u­la­tors for neu­ro­path­ic pain. Oc­ci­dent and an undis­closed Ger­man fam­i­ly of­fice led this round, which will be used to fu­el a Phase IIa study named “CURE“ for its lead com­pound AP-325.

→ Life sci­ences ven­ture firm Ep­i­darex Cap­i­tal is launch­ing a new biotech fund called Ep­i­darex Ex­eed. WSJ Pro re­port­ed in March that Ep­i­darex Cap­i­tal had raised over $100 mil­lion for a new fund fo­cused on ear­ly-stage as­sets. In their re­lease to­day Ep­i­darex called the new ven­ture “a ther­a­peu­tic dis­cov­ery en­gine” and said it would ap­ply seed fund­ing and man­age­ment to “trans­form break­through life sci­ence in­no­va­tions in­to in­vestable as­sets over a pe­ri­od of 12-18 months.”

→ On­cono­va Ther­a­peu­tics — which picked up a few mil­lion in cash to fund the Phase III pro­gram for its lead drug, rigosert­ib, back in May — has col­lab­o­rat­ed with In­cep­tua Med­i­cines Ac­cess, a sub­sidiary of Icep­tua Group, to make avail­able in­tra­venous rigosert­ib via a pre-ap­proval ac­cess pro­gram in se­lect­ed coun­tries across the world. A pre-ap­proval ac­cess pro­gram al­lows for ex­per­i­men­tal agents in de­vel­op­ment to be made avail­able up­on re­quest of a physi­cian or a pa­tient for ap­pro­pri­ate pa­tients for whom no al­ter­na­tive treat­ment op­tion ex­ists in their coun­try.

Flagship Pioneering tapped into a variety of trendy R&D themes when it officially debuted Senda Biosciences a few months ago, most prominently its focus on the microbiome, computational biology and cellular interactions. And while it’s all still in its infancy, the founders clearly elicited some high-profile attention from a major player which straddles the line between food and medicine.

Nestlé Health Science has partnered with Senda on one of its initial slate of R&D focuses, aligning itself with the biotech on metabolics, with a focus on some big targets, including obesity and glycemia.

Top drug developers are “inching ahead” in improving access to much-needed drugs around the world — an issue that has been underscored by the Covid-19 pandemic. But there’s still more work to do, Access to Medicine Foundation executive director Jayasree Iyer said.

Every two years, the Access to Medicines Index ranks the top 20 biotechs leading the push for better access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries. This year’s report, published Tuesday, looks at drug access in 106 countries.