Lyn­parza se­cures third EU nod; Pro­tein degra­da­tion biotech grabs $16M launch round from Chi­nese VCs; Wave shares tum­ble on tri­al de­lay

→ Lyn­parza, the first PARP in­hibitor from As­traZeneca $AZN to win US ap­proval in 2014, has se­cured its third EU ap­proval. The drug won the EMA nod for use pa­tients with germline BR­CA1/2-mu­ta­tions and who have hu­man epi­der­mal growth fac­tor re­cep­tor 2 (HER2)-neg­a­tive lo­cal­ly ad­vanced or metasta­t­ic breast can­cer, part­ner Mer­ck $MRK said on Wednes­day.

→ A new pro­tein degra­da­tion biotech has raised a $16 mil­lion launch round from a pair of Chi­nese ven­ture groups. San Diego-based Cull­gen says it plans to put the mon­ey to use on its tech plat­form us­ing ubiq­ui­tin-me­di­at­ed, small mol­e­cule-in­duced pro­tein degra­da­tion to go af­ter can­cer, in­flam­ma­to­ry, and au­toim­mune dis­eases. Se­quoia Cap­i­tal Chi­na and High­light Cap­i­tal pro­vid­ed the cash. “Since our found­ing in ear­ly 2018 we have made sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ment of our tar­get­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion plat­form which has di­rect­ly led to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of sev­er­al pre-clin­i­cal as­sets that we are rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing to­wards the clin­ic,” notes Ying Luo, chair­man and pres­i­dent of Cull­gen.

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