The ven­ture in­vestors at Medicxi are fund­ing a pair of biotech spin­outs from UK-based So­sei Hep­tares, which has been fine tun­ing its ex­per­tise in G pro­tein-cou­pled re­cep­tors for a num­ber of years now.

Francesco De Ru­ber­tis

Medicxi is of­fer­ing €40 mil­lion to kick­start two new com­pa­nies — the twins Orex­ia and In­ex­ia, which will tar­get Orex­in OX1 and OX2 for neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases. The Hep­tares sub­sidiary will put its re­searchers to work on the two projects, iden­ti­fy­ing nar­colep­sy as one key dis­ease on the menu.

Orex­ins are well known tar­gets in the biotech world. These neu­ropep­tides are in­volved in the reg­u­la­tion of sleep, wake­ful­ness and ap­petite.

Mal­colm Weir

Medicxi part­ner Francesco De Ru­ber­tis will sit on the board to watch over the firm’s in­vest­ment. Both of these groups have deep roots in the UK, with So­sei look­ing to build up the Hep­tares op­er­a­tion un­der Mal­colm Weir.

The VC’s cash should be enough to get through proof-of-con­cept stud­ies, fit­ting neat­ly in Medicxi’s as­set-cen­tric fo­cus, which of­ten fo­cus­es the mon­ey on ear­ly-stage re­search pro­grams stripped of as much over­head as they can.

The German billionaires behind BioNTech have found a new vaccine project to back.

Through their family office Athos Service, twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann are leading a $25 million private placement into Switzerland’s AC Immune — which concurrently announced that it’s shelling out $58.7 million worth of stock to acquire Affiris’ portfolio of therapies targeting alpha-synuclein, including a vaccine candidate, for Parkinson’s disease.

Editor’s note: Interested in following biopharma’s fast-paced IPO market? You can bookmark our IPO Tracker here.

In a week that’s expected to see several biotechs price their IPOs, Candel Therapeutics got things kicked off Tuesday with a muted opener.

The company helmed by former GlaxoSmithKline vet Paul Peter Tak made its way to Nasdaq thanks to a $72 million raise, which was downsized by about 15% than originally anticipated, according to Renaissance Capital. Candel priced at $8 per share after initially seeking to launch in the $13 to $15 range.

As public and private companies stare down the reality of the Delta variant, many are now requiring that their employees or students be vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to attending school or to returning or starting a new job. Claims that such mandates are illegal or cannot be used for vaccines under emergency use authorizations have now been dismissed.

Setting the record straight, the Department of Justice on Monday called the mandates legal in a new memo, even when used for people with vaccines that remain subject to EUAs.

Lumira Ventures closed its largest fund on Monday, raking in $220 million to pump into the life sciences — but instead of targeting biotech hubs like San Francisco and Boston, the company is rolling the dice on “underserved geographies” in the US and Canada.

“We find oftentimes companies located in places like Montreal, or Fort Lauderdale, FL, or Kansas City or Phoenix, AZ just have more capital efficiency and better valuations, without having to compromise anything at all in the quality of the innovation and the management talent,” co-founder and managing partner Gerry Brunk told Endpoints News.