A lit­tle un­der two years af­ter a com­pa­ny re­brand­ing, Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion is tak­ing an even big­ger step to­ward ad­vanc­ing its goals.

For­mer­ly known as Peptin­no­vate, the British biotech an­nounced a $53.4 mil­lion Se­ries B ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing, help­ing to fur­ther ad­vance two clin­i­cal pro­grams in rheuma­toid arthri­tis and asth­ma. Though those are the two ini­tial in­di­ca­tions the com­pa­ny is fo­cus­ing on, CEO Jonathan Rig­by told End­points News he hopes the can­di­dates can be ap­plied to a broad swath of au­toim­mune dis­or­ders.

“We’re not look­ing for the nee­dle in the haystack; we kind of have a haystack made out of nee­dles,” Rig­by said.

Mon­day’s round was led by Morn­ing­side Ven­tures and in­clud­ed fund­ing from Lon­don-based 24Hay­mar­ket. Rig­by ex­pects the cash to go to­ward fur­ther Phase II tri­als in RA and al­ler­gic dis­eases and help the com­pa­ny build out its US in­fra­struc­ture, giv­ing the com­pa­ny run­way through 2022.

The the­o­ry be­hind Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion’s sci­ence, Rig­by says, is that its prod­ucts can “re­set” the im­mune sys­tem by in­ter­fer­ing with the com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween den­drit­ic cells and T cells when ex­posed to anti­gens, ef­fec­tive­ly re­duc­ing in­flam­ma­to­ry re­spons­es with­out sup­press­ing the body’s nat­ur­al de­fens­es. By do­ing so, this can help pa­tients with­out ex­pos­ing them to the po­ten­tial in­fec­tions that can af­flict in­di­vid­u­als tak­ing im­muno­sup­pres­sive drugs.

Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion’s lead pro­gram, re­ferred to as ‘1805, is a bind­ing im­munoglob­u­lin pro­tein that has com­plet­ed a Phase IIa tri­al in RA for pa­tients who had pre­vi­ous­ly been un­re­spon­sive to oth­er med­i­cines. With da­ta show­ing that the in­jectable ‘1805 in­duced re­mis­sion out to 12 weeks, Rig­by is tak­ing aim at Ab­b­Vie’s Hu­mi­ra, as­sert­ing his prod­ucts are more con­ve­nient than TN­Fs that need con­stant main­te­nance.

“These drugs re­quire chron­ic dos­ing, so a pa­tient takes an in­jec­tion every cou­ple of weeks or every month,” Rig­by said, adding that the ef­fects of ‘1805 last for sev­er­al months.

‘1104, mean­while, is a pep­tide that seeks to in­crease the ex­pres­sion of A20, re­duc­ing the in­flam­ma­tion re­sponse in asth­ma. Prepa­ra­tions for Phase II tri­als have al­ready be­gun and Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin those at some point next year. The com­pa­ny is al­so look­ing at whether or not the pro­gram can be an ef­fec­tive ther­a­peu­tic for pa­tients hos­pi­tal­ized with Covid-19.

Try­ing to take a piece of Hu­mi­ra’s pie is a tall task for any biotech, let alone one that didn’t have any US em­ploy­ees be­fore Rig­by was ap­point­ed to steer the ship back in April. Ab­b­Vie’s block­buster, ap­proved in sev­er­al in­di­ca­tions such as arthri­tis, plaque pso­ri­a­sis and ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, has been one of the world’s best-sell­ing drugs for years and pulled in more than $19 bil­lion in glob­al sales last year.

But Rig­by is con­fi­dent that Im­mune Reg­u­la­tion has a fair chance to eat in­to, at the very least, some of that mar­ket share. Though he re­mained tight-lipped about which spe­cif­ic ar­eas he’d take his pro­grams, Rig­by said the im­me­di­ate next steps in­volve go­ing in­to rare au­toim­mune dis­eases. Clin­i­cal tri­als for ‘1805 and ‘1104 in that field are al­so ex­pect­ed to be­gin next year.

Until Spark Therapeutics’ pioneering gene therapy, Luxturna, came along, patients with retinitis pigmentosa had few treatment options. Even after it was approved, though, the majority were left with the exact same options.

Because it’s targeting mutations in a specific gene known as RPE65, Luxturna can only address 2 to 3% of the entire RP population, Stephane Boissel told Endpoints News.

Boissel is the newly-minted CEO of SparingVision, a French biotech co-founded by José-Alain Sahel and Thierry Léveillard at the Institut de la Vision. They have their sight set on a new kind of AAV construct — a next-generation gene therapy if you will — that can treat all patients of RP independent of genetic mutations.

Months after nailing down a $10.4 million Series D and a partnership with French pharma giant Sanofi, AbSci is pulling in its largest fundraise yet — $65 million to advance what it calls its protein printing tech.

The Vancouver, WA-based biotech is working on a more efficient way to manufacture proteins — from full-length antibodies to insulin — using E. coli. The company says it’s on a quest to make protein production “as simple as DNA synthesis,” allowing for swift production of difficult-to-produce biotherapeutics. It’s tagging the Series E for expansion of its production capacity, which includes a new 60,000-square-foot facility in Vancouver.

Researchers at MD Anderson have a new partner to help them get early-stage programs into the clinic.

In conjunction with The Focus Fund, MD Anderson is launching the Cancer Focus Fund to advance investigational cancer therapies from late preclinical development through Phase I and Phase Ib/II clinical trials. The fund will start off with more than $50 million of initial capital.

“Without appropriate support, we know that some therapies with great potential may be delayed, may not be developed properly in the clinical setting or may never make it into clinical studies,” MD Anderson senior VP Ferran Prat said in a statement. “Through investment from the Cancer Focus Fund and the support of MD Anderson, we hope to advance worthwhile new treatments past the traditional hurdles in the drug development process.”