De­spite a sig­nif­i­cant bear mar­ket af­fect­ing the pub­lic biotech sec­tor, pri­vate com­pa­nies are still man­ag­ing to pull in VC-backed fund­ing rounds. The lat­est such round comes out of North Car­oli­na’s re­search tri­an­gle for a pre­ci­sion an­tibac­te­r­i­al drug mak­er.

Lo­cus Bio­sciences closed a $35 mil­lion Se­ries B round Wednes­day morn­ing, fea­tur­ing some no­table names in­clud­ing Ar­tis Ven­tures, Ten­cent Hold­ings, Viking Glob­al In­vestors, Dis­cov­ery In­no­va­tions and John­son and John­son In­no­va­tion, the in­vest­ment arm of J&J. CEO and co-founder Paul Garo­fo­lo told End­points News that the funds will be used to ad­vance the com­pa­ny’s lead can­di­date, dubbed LBP-EC01.

The pro­gram is a cr­Phage pre­ci­sion med­i­cine tar­get­ing E.coli bac­te­ria caus­ing uri­nary tract in­fec­tions. The can­di­date, for which BAR­DA of­fered a $76.9 mil­lion fund­ing award in 2020, is near­ing a Phase II/III tri­al that the com­pa­ny hopes will start in the mid­dle of 2022.

Garo­fo­lo says that while many ear­ly en­trants in the mi­cro­bio­me space were main­ly fo­cused on donor-de­rived so­lu­tions, Lo­cus’ phi­los­o­phy has al­ways been to at­tack spe­cif­ic tar­gets with pre­ci­sion med­i­cine. Ac­cord­ing to him, the biotech’s drugs are de­signed to lim­it off-site tox­i­c­i­ty: an ap­proach sim­i­lar to the vast ar­ray of on­col­o­gy biotechs out there, though for Lo­cus that means not af­fect­ing “good” bac­te­ria.

The CEO is al­so look­ing to­ward ac­qui­si­tions, a move they’re fa­mil­iar with as, af­ter its Se­ries A in 2017, the com­pa­ny ac­quired Epibio­me’s plat­form. The deal man­aged to put Lo­cus on J&J’s radar, Garo­fo­lo said, and it is a move they are con­sid­er­ing again, es­pe­cial­ly as the mar­ket go­ing through a tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od.

“We think there (are) great pre­ci­sion ad­di­tion tech­nolo­gies that are out there that are re­al­ly strug­gling, the mi­cro­bio­me space is not in great shape. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think that’s be­cause the com­pa­nies are not great com­pa­nies,” he said. “I think there are some great com­pa­nies out there that are re­al­ly in ba­si­cal­ly trou­bled wa­ters.”

The com­pa­ny’s pre­vi­ous Se­ries A round in 2017, of which Ar­tis and Ten­cent were a part, net­ted the com­pa­ny $17 mil­lion. But since then, the com­pa­ny has been land­ing sev­er­al non-di­lu­tive deals to keep the com­pa­ny’s en­gine run­ning. This in­cludes a deal in 2019 with J&J to de­vel­op CRISPR-en­gi­neered bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­peu­tics tar­get­ing two key pathogens for the po­ten­tial treat­ment of res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions, among oth­ers.

Through that deal, Lo­cus earned a cool $20 mil­lion in ini­tial pay­ments, and the biotech is el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive a to­tal of $798 mil­lion in po­ten­tial mile­stone pay­ments and roy­al­ties.

Over­all, Garo­fo­lo is tight­en­ing up Lo­cus’s war chest for the months ahead. He said he feels pre­pared for what the tri­als and the mar­ket might have up their sleeves.

As the House-passed bill to cap the monthly price of insulin at $35 nationwide makes its way for a Senate vote soon, Sanofi announced Wednesday morning that beginning next month it will cut the monthly price of its insulins for uninsured Americans to $35, down from $99 previously.

The announcement from Sanofi, which allows the uninsured to buy one or multiple Sanofi insulins (Lantus, Insulin Glargine U-100, Toujeo, Admelog, and Apidra) at $35 for a 30-day supply effective July 1, follows House passage (232-193) of the monthly cap in March, with just 12 Republicans voting in favor of the measure.

As Astellas continues its drive to build out its gene therapy portfolio and capabilities, a subsidiary of the Japanese pharma company has entered into a collaboration with a little-known Pittsburgh biotech.

Astellas-owned Mitobridge and Generian Pharmaceuticals announced on Wednesday that they will work together in a new deal for “undruggable” protein targets. Generian will net an undisclosed upfront payment and could get up to $180 million in milestones, should anything from its platform prove successful, as well as single-digit royalties on global net sales.

Three months separated from a disappointing readout of its Covid-19 vaccine, Icosavax is back with what it calls positive topline data for a different VLP vaccine candidate — although investors aren’t impressed.

IVX-121, a vaccine candidate for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), appeared to generate “robust” immune responses among both young and older adults, as measured by neutralizing antibodies, and appeared generally well-tolerated, Icosavax reported.

After about 15 years in an Oxford lab and three more years in the upstart world following a 2019 spinout, MiroBio is ready to enter UK clinical trials and, en route to the clinic, the biotech has picked up $97 million in Series B funds.

The £80 million financing round kicked off in earnest last September and includes a transatlantic consortium — led by Medicxi — ready to bankroll that first clinical trial, beginning “imminently,” as well as the debut study of a second program thereafter, executive chair Eliot Charles, an SR One venture partner, told Endpoints News.