Ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals are con­tin­u­ing to be­come a hot top­ic in bio­phar­ma, with com­pa­nies such as Se­quoia, No­var­tis and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb look­ing to get in on the ac­tion. A new start­up launched Wednes­day is look­ing to catch the wave, start­ing with a team and as­sets from Ipsen.

Berlin-based Ariceum Ther­a­peu­tics has se­cured a €25 mil­lion ($26.7 mil­lion) Se­ries A to fur­ther de­vel­op its lead as­set and pro­pri­etary pep­tide de­riv­a­tive. Found­ed last year (and co-found­ed by EQT Life Sci­ences), Ariceum is head­ed by Man­fred Rüdi­ger, a vet­er­an of over 25 years in the bio­phar­ma world.

The com­pa­ny was formed around of a sale of as­sets from Ipsen, tak­ing along the ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal can­di­date as well as a team of re­searchers, in­clud­ing the Ariceum’s new CMO, ac­cord­ing to Rüdi­ger.

The as­set in ques­tion, dubbed satoreotide, is a ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drug and an an­tag­o­nist of the so­mato­statin type 2 (SST2) re­cep­tor, which is over­ex­pressed in many can­cers, Rüdi­ger says. This in­cludes cer­tain dis­eases such as small cell lung can­cer, high-grade neu­roen­docrine tu­mors (NETs) and neu­rob­las­toma. Satoreotide will be used as a “ther­a­nos­tic” for both the di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of tu­mors ex­press­ing the SST2 re­cep­tor.

“The rea­son why the share­hold­ers de­cid­ed to en­ter in­to the ra­dio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness is that this has be­come a very hot and very com­pet­i­tive area with some re­cent big suc­cess­es,” Rüdi­ger said. “Every­body now re­al­izes that small com­pounds, which you can ad­min­is­ter by in­tra­venous in­fu­sion, will find the tu­mor and al­so the metas­tases and the can­cer cells through­out the body and kill them due to the ra­dioac­tive pay­load.”

For the Se­ries A round, three in­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ed, in­clud­ing EQT, Swe­den-based Health­Cap and Swiss firm Pure­os Bioven­tures. All three in­vestors will con­tribute to Ariceum’s board.

Ariceum will use the funds for sev­er­al dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es, such as build­ing up the head­count and gen­er­al op­er­a­tions, with the goal of hav­ing three clin­i­cal tri­als run­ning by next year. Rüdi­ger said the round’s run­way is very short, and the com­pa­ny is an­tic­i­pat­ing pur­su­ing an­oth­er round of fund­ing in the sec­ond half of 2022.

The com­pa­ny is po­si­tioned dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­ers in this space, Rüdi­ger notes, in that ex­ecs are start­ing with a Phase II clin­i­cal as­set, where safe­ty in pa­tients has al­ready been de­ter­mined. Satoreotide, while it’s in ear­ly clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, has been ad­min­is­tered to more than 100 pa­tients in ear­li­er stud­ies al­ready.

He al­so said Ariceum has more of a head start be­cause they are launch­ing with an ex­pe­ri­enced team and in­vestors fa­mil­iar with the space. Ac­cord­ing to Rüdi­ger, these fac­tors help the com­pa­ny apart from oth­er star­tups in the field.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny wants to carve its own path for­ward and not nec­es­sar­i­ly try to dom­i­nate every­one else.

“You have to find your sweet spot. Again, like in the car in­dus­try, you don’t on­ly have BMW and Porsche. There are many, many oth­ers and they’re all suc­cess­ful,” he said. “So we have a plat­form tech­nol­o­gy on which we will build screen­ing and de­vel­op­ing new com­pounds. And I think we have some very good ideas on how to do this more ef­fi­cient­ly than oth­ers.”

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.