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.

About five years ago, Amit Etkin had a breakthrough.

The Stanford neurologist, a soft-spoken demi-prodigy who became a professor while still a resident, had been obsessed for a decade with how to better define psychiatric disorders. Drugs for depression or bipolar disorder didn’t work for many patients with the conditions, and he suspected the reason was how traditional diagnoses didn’t actually get at the heart of what was going on in a patient’s brain.

While falling behind the biggest PD-(L)1 drugs in terms of sales, Roche has looked to carve out a space for its Tecentriq with a growing expertise in lung cancer. The drug will now take an early lead in the sought-after adjuvant setting — but competitors are on the way.

The FDA on Friday approved Tecentriq as an adjuvant therapy for patients with Stage II-IIIA non small cell lung cancer with PD-(L)1 scores greater than or equal to 1, making it the first drug of its kind approved in an early setting that covers around 40% of all NSCLC patients.

Three new entities priced their public debuts late Thursday and early Friday, including a SPAC, a traditional Nasdaq IPO and a Chinese biotech joining the Hong Kong Index.

Shanghai-based Abbisko Therapeutics raised the most money of the triumvirate, garnering $226 million in its Hong Kong debut and pricing at HK$12.46, or roughly $1.60 in US dollars. The blank check company followed up with a $150 million raise, while MiNK Therapeutics priced on Nasdaq at $12 per share and a $40 million raise.

While a horde of drugmakers develops bispecific antibodies to more directly target tumor cells — there were about 100 programs in or nearing clinical trials back in May — a new company is emerging to go one step further.

On Thursday, Tentarix Biotherapeutics unveiled a $50 million Series A round to support its next-gen multi-specifics platform. While the field has largely focused on bispecifics, which engage two targets, Tentarix believes its multifunctional programs have the potential to be even more specific, since more conditions must be met for potent activity to occur.