E-tail­er bil­lion­aire Mick­ey Mik­i­tani has backed As­pyr­i­an Ther­a­peu­tics’ pho­toim­munother­a­py tech from the be­gin­ning, start­ing as a par­tic­i­pant in the com­pa­ny’s $40 mil­lion Se­ries A round and lat­er tak­ing the helm as CEO and wrap­ping the brand en­tire­ly in­to his Rakuten em­pire.

He’s now reeled in an­oth­er $166 mil­lion to push the com­pa­ny’s lead head and neck can­cer drug through a glob­al Phase III tri­al.

Rakuten Med­ical — for­mer­ly known as As­pyr­i­an Ther­a­peu­tics, then Rakuten As­pyr­i­an — un­veiled a Se­ries D round on Wednes­day, con­sist­ing of $75 mil­lion in new cap­i­tal and $91 mil­lion in con­vert­ible promis­so­ry notes. Gen­er­al Cat­a­lyst led the round, with some help from ex­ist­ing in­vestors like Rakuten Group and SBI Group.

“We be­lieve the ex­ten­si­bil­i­ty of the Il­lu­mi­nox plat­form has the po­ten­tial to re­de­fine the way clin­i­cians care for their pa­tients,” Paul Kwan, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Gen­er­al Cat­a­lyst, said in a state­ment.

The Cal­i­for­nia-based biotech’s Il­lu­mi­nox plat­form is based on pho­toim­munother­a­py work from the lab of Hisa­ta­ka Kobayashi at the Na­tion­al Can­cer In­sti­tute. Kobayashi, an imag­ing ex­pert, made the some­what serendip­i­tous dis­cov­ery that con­ju­gat­ing an an­ti­body with a light-ac­ti­vat­ed dye called IRDye 700DX, then hit­ting it with a near-in­frared light, could kill can­cer cells with­out off-tar­get tox­i­c­i­ty.

Mik­i­tani stum­bled up­on the dis­cov­ery while search­ing for a bet­ter ther­a­py for his fa­ther, who was dy­ing of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. While it was too late to save his fa­ther, he ran with the idea, back­ing As­pyr­i­an and then tak­ing the CEO spot in 2018.

Rakuten’s lead can­di­date, ASP-1929, was grant­ed con­di­tion­al ear­ly ap­proval in Japan for ad­vanced or lo­cal­ly re­cur­rent head and neck can­cer in Sep­tem­ber, and is cur­rent­ly in a glob­al Phase III tri­al for the same in­di­ca­tion. The can­di­date em­ploys the an­ti­body ce­tux­imab con­ju­gat­ed to IRDye 700DX, and is de­signed to bind to epi­der­mal growth fac­tor re­cep­tors (EGF), which are ex­pressed in sev­er­al types of sol­id tu­mors, in­clud­ing head and neck, cu­ta­neous esophageal, lung, colon and pan­cre­at­ic can­cers. Then it’s lo­cal­ly ac­ti­vat­ed by a laser de­vice sys­tem.

Rakuten says it’s work­ing on ad­di­tion­al ther­a­pies un­der the same plat­form to treat “a range of on­co­log­i­cal in­di­ca­tions.” The com­pa­ny is al­so in­ves­ti­gat­ing ASP-1929’s ef­fi­ca­cy in com­bi­na­tion with an­ti-PD1 in mul­ti­ple tu­mor types, in­clud­ing head and neck can­cer.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel made clear on the last quarterly call that “now is not the time to slow down.” On Thursday, he made a bit more room in the cockpit.

The company unveiled a new executive role on Thursday, promoting former chief technical operations and quality officer Juan Andres to president of strategic partnerships and enterprise expansion, and poaching a former Novartis exec to take his place.

It was great getting back to a live ESMO conference/webinar in Paris followed by a live pop-up event for the Endpoints 11 in Boston. We’re staying on the road in October with our return for a live/streaming EUBIO22 in London.

Silicon Valley Bank’s Nooman Haque and I are once again jumping back into the thick of it with a slate of virtual and live events on October 12. I’ll get the ball rolling with a virtual fireside chat with Novo Nordisk R&D chief Marcus Schindler, covering their pipeline plans and BD work.

Gilead is mounting its counterfeit drug lawsuit, naming two “kingpins” and a complex network of conspirators who allegedly sold imitation bottles of its HIV meds, some of which ended up in US pharmacies.

The pharma giant on Wednesday provided an update on what it called a “large-scale, sophisticated counterfeiting conspiracy,” accusing two new defendants of “leading and orchestrating” a scheme to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in illegitimate drugs posing as meds such as Biktarvy and Descovy.