The idea that you can drug RNA has at­tract­ed a va­ri­ety of biotech star­tups in­ter­est­ed in pi­o­neer­ing a new tech­nol­o­gy. And one of those biotechs look­ing to break new ground in the field just scooped up a $30 mil­lion round.

The Durham, NC-based biotech Ri­bometrix is the brain­child of Kevin Weeks, the UNC in­ves­ti­ga­tor who hatched the sci­en­tif­ic ideas that would go on to cre­ate the plat­form at Ri­bometrix.

Mike Solomon

The se­cret sauce here is tar­get­ing RNA mol­e­cules that fold in­to 3D struc­tures. By learn­ing how to ex­plore and un­der­stand those 3D struc­tures, the com­pa­ny be­lieves it can hit some cur­rent­ly un­drug­gable tar­gets — vast­ly ex­pand­ing the land­scape of po­ten­tial drugs. And they’ve been fine tun­ing the plat­form tech so they can do it with a string of new pro­grams, start­ing with Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease.

“We’re 100% fo­cused on tar­get­ing func­tion­al 3D struc­tures,” says Mike Solomon, the SV ven­ture part­ner and for­mer COO of Deci­bel — where he helped or­ga­nize the ven­ture back­ing — who’s now go­ing to make run­ning Ri­bometrix his full-time job.

“I’m go­ing to be­come the full-time CEO,” adds Solomon, who’s clear­ly not fak­ing it. “I’m so ex­cit­ed by the com­pa­ny, the po­ten­tial to do some­thing so trans­for­ma­tion­al. The po­ten­tial is enor­mous.”

Solomon man­ages a team of 15, which is slat­ed to dou­ble in size now that the new ven­ture mon­ey is in place.

The oth­er com­pa­nies in the field in­clude Bill Haney’s Sky­hawk Ther­a­peu­tics, Mike Gilman’s Ar­rakis and Ex­pan­sion Ther­a­peu­tics.

Mer­ck’s ear­ly-stage ven­ture group, M Ven­tures, with led the round Am­gen Ven­tures, Pap­pas Cap­i­tal and Il­lu­mi­na Ven­tures jump­ing on board the ex­pand­ed syn­di­cate. Found­ing in­vestors SV Health In­vestors, Ab­b­Vie Ven­tures, Hat­teras Ven­ture Part­ners, MP Health­care Ven­ture Man­age­ment, the De­men­tia Dis­cov­ery Fund and Alexan­dria Ven­ture In­vest­ments al­so joined the round. M Ven­tures’ Hakan Gok­er is join­ing the board.

Im­age: Founders Katie Warn­er and Kevin Weeks. RI­BOMETRIX

Digital therapeutics company Better Therapeutics announced on Thursday that it’s cutting 35% of its staff as it awaits FDA clearance for its first product.

The company, which launched eight years ago, is one of a growing group of companies seeking a digital alternative to traditional medicine. The space saw a record $7.5 billion in investments in 2021, according to Chris Dokomajilar at DealForma, with uses spanning ADHD, PTSD and other indications. However, private insurers have been slow to hop on board.

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.