A Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures-backed cell ther­a­py biotech has se­cured $50 mil­lion in Se­ries A funds to bankroll CAR-NK ther­a­pies.

At the helm of the Shang­hai-based Neukio Bio­ther­a­peu­tics is a leader with ex­pe­ri­ence in the CAR-T cell ther­a­py mar­ket, with Richard Liqun Wang hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served as chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Fo­s­un and Kite joint ven­ture that land­ed the first CAR-T cell ther­a­py ap­proval in Chi­na last year. Kite and own­er Gilead mar­ket the cell ther­a­py prod­uct as Yescar­ta in the US.

Neukio raised the round with sup­port from Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures, Sher­pa Health­care Part­ners and IDG Cap­i­tal. The com­pa­ny pre­vi­ous­ly snagged $40 mil­lion in what it char­ac­ter­ized as an an­gel round in Oc­to­ber 2021. The same in­vestors took part in that fi­nanc­ing.

The biotech, formed last year, is look­ing to make al­lo­genic cell ther­a­pies “via the iP­SC-CAR-NK ax­is,” ac­cord­ing to its web­site. Neukio has 5,700 square me­ters of R&D and man­u­fac­tur­ing space, the biotech says on its web­site.

With the Se­ries A, Neukio said it will put can­di­dates through pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal stud­ies, as well as use the pro­ceeds to hire more em­ploy­ees.

“In as lit­tle as 10 months since the op­er­a­tion of our new lab­o­ra­to­ries, not on­ly have we com­plet­ed sev­er­al sig­nal­ing path­way mod­i­fi­ca­tions and CAR de­signs tai­lored for sol­id tu­mors, but al­so we have made sig­nif­i­cant progress in the de­vel­op­ment of in­no­v­a­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es of NK dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and ex­pan­sion,” Wang, the founder, CEO and chair­man, said in a state­ment.

New in­vestors in­clude CD Cap­i­tal, Al­win Cap­i­tal and Sur­plus Cap­i­tal. — Kyle LaHu­cik

Flag­ship Bio­sciences ac­quire a di­vi­sion from In­ter­pace  

A Col­orado-based biotech is look­ing to snap up a di­vi­sion from In­ter­pace Bio­sciences.

Flag­ship Bio­sciences, which pro­vides bi­o­log­i­cal and bio­mark­er an­a­lyt­i­cal ser­vices, has ac­quired In­ter­pace Phar­ma So­lu­tions, a di­vi­sion of In­ter­pace Bio­sciences, for an undis­closed amount.

Ac­cord­ing to Flag­ship, the com­bined com­pa­ny will add to an ar­se­nal of an­a­lyt­i­cal and bio­mark­er ser­vices as well as pro­vide ac­cess to a re­search lab­o­ra­to­ry in North Car­oli­na’s Re­search Tri­an­gle.

“By com­bin­ing these or­ga­ni­za­tions, we cre­ate a sin­gle-source provider of­fer­ing a larg­er range of bio­mark­er and an­a­lyt­ics ser­vices while main­tain­ing and ex­pand­ing the proven ex­per­tise of each lab­o­ra­to­ry,” said Trevor John­son, Flag­ship’s CEO in a state­ment.

The deal, ac­cord­ing to Flag­ship, aims to use IPS’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties to sup­port clin­i­cal tri­als and di­ag­nos­tic de­vel­op­ment in sev­er­al ar­eas in­clud­ing im­muno-on­col­o­gy, hema­tol­ogy and sol­id tu­mors, among oth­ers.

This ac­qui­si­tion al­so comes on the back of Flag­ship re­ceiv­ing an in­vest­ment from Am­per­sand Cap­i­tal Part­ners, BroadOak Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Re­search Cor­po­ra­tion Tech­nolo­gies. The amount of the in­vest­ment was not dis­closed. — Tyler Patchen

What’s Biohaven without its CGRP portfolio? That’s what CEO Vlad Coric is tasked with deciding as he maps out the new Biohaven post-Pfizer takeover.

Pfizer officially scooped up Biohaven’s CGRP assets on Monday, including blockbuster migraine drug Nurtec and the investigational zavegepant, for $11.6 billion. As a result, Coric spun the broader pipeline into an independent company on Tuesday — with the same R&D team behind Nurtec but about 1,000 fewer staffers and a renewed focus on neuroscience and rare disease.

There are some odd-looking purple creatures lurking around the halls of AstraZenca lately. The “Phil” character cutouts are purple, personified eosinophils with big buggy eyes and wide mouths, and they’re a part of AZ’s newest awareness effort to help people understand eosinophilic asthma.

The “Asthma Behaving Badly” characters aren’t only on the walls at AZ to show the new campaign to employees, however. The “Phils” are also showing up online on the campaign website, and in digital and social ads and posts on Facebook and Instagram.

Astellas and Pantherna have expanded their November 2021 pact surrounding the latter’s mRNA platform to include a new target organ, the duo announced Tuesday morning, though they did not specify what that target is.

German biotech Pantherna is home to two platform technologies — one that designs mRNAs for non-vaccine therapies and another that designs LNPs. Astellas and Pantherna’s deal appears to mainly revolve around the first platform, which Astellas said it is using to research direct reprogramming, or turning cells from one kind into another without an intermediate stem cell phase.