There’s an­oth­er uni­corn in biotech land, as Bench­ling and its lead­ing R&D cloud plat­form pull in a $200 mil­lion Se­ries E to help sci­en­tists ac­cel­er­ate drug de­vel­op­ment. In do­ing so, the com­pa­ny hit a lofty $4 bil­lion val­u­a­tion — near­ly five times what it was worth around this time last year, ac­cord­ing to Forbes.

De­spite the fact that drug de­vel­op­ment is be­com­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly more com­plex, the in­dus­try con­tin­ues to run on pa­per, emails and spread­sheets, co-founder and CEO Sajith Wick­ra­masekara said in a video on Bench­ling’s web­site. The for­mer MIT stu­dent sought to change that by cre­at­ing soft­ware that al­lows sci­en­tists to bet­ter track, mod­el and fore­cast their work.

“Giv­en the mas­sive change in com­plex­i­ty of the work that’s be­ing done — more teams, new mol­e­cules, new process­es — it was im­pos­si­ble to do work in an ef­fi­cient way with a lega­cy set of tools,” he said.

Since launch­ing Bench­ling in 2012, Wick­ra­masekara has sold the plat­form to more than 1,000 R&D or­ga­ni­za­tions world­wide, in­clud­ing big play­ers like Gilead, Sanofi and Re­gen­eron. Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy CEO Steve Harr says Bench­ling helps the com­pa­ny — which scored a mas­sive IPO ear­li­er this year — “cap­ture, store and an­a­lyze im­mense amounts of da­ta.”

In Jan­u­ary, Bench­ling an­nounced it dou­bled its an­nu­al re­cur­ring rev­enue for the fourth year in a row, and opened its EMEA head­quar­ters in Zurich. The com­pa­ny bagged a $50 mil­lion Se­ries D in May, bring­ing its to­tal fundraise to $114 mil­lion with an $850 mil­lion val­u­a­tion, Forbes re­port­ed. With the Se­ries E round, the com­pa­ny’s to­tal raise sits at $350 mil­lion.

Wick­ra­masekara told Forbes that the com­pa­ny doesn’t have a time­line for an IPO, but is “do­ing the work to get ready.”

“This fund­ing will en­able us to pro­vide more prod­ucts, so­lu­tions and ser­vices that sci­en­tists around the world ul­ti­mate­ly need to solve some of hu­man­i­ty’s great­est chal­lenges,” he said in a state­ment.

Se­quoia Cap­i­tal Glob­al Eq­ui­ties led the Se­ries E, with help from a mix of new and old in­vestors, in­clud­ing Al­time­ter Cap­i­tal, By­ers Cap­i­tal, Elad Gil, Thrive Cap­i­tal, Bench­mark, Men­lo Ven­tures, Alkeon Cap­i­tal, ICONIQ, Lux Cap­i­tal, Spark Cap­i­tal and Lead Edge Cap­i­tal.

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.