Bio­engi­neer­ing wiz Sangee­ta Bha­tia has helped spin out a new biotech com­pa­ny from her MIT lab that will now look to test and even­tu­al­ly com­mer­cial­ize new “ac­tiv­i­ty sen­sors” that can both flag dis­eases as well as mon­i­tor a pa­tient’s re­sponse to a drug.

There­sia Gouw

The com­pa­ny is Glympse, which has sur­faced oc­ca­sion­al­ly in se­mi-stealth mode af­ter In­dia’s Ki­ran Mazum­dar-Shaw and There­sia Gouw at As­pect Ven­tures seed­ed the ef­fort with $6.6 mil­lion in 2015. Now a much big­ger syn­di­cate has come along to in­ject a $22 mil­lion launch round in­to the ven­ture.

Amy Schul­man

Their first project will fo­cus on a sen­sor that can de­tect NASH, a big field in drug R&D right now. There’s more work to be done in can­cer, and the lit­tle com­pa­ny has a big po­ten­tial list of tar­gets to shoot for af­ter that.

LS Po­laris In­no­va­tion Fund and Arch Ven­tures led the round, join­ing new in­vestors Charles Riv­er Ven­tures, Gilead Sci­ences, Yonghua Cap­i­tal, and In­evitable Ven­tures. Ex­ist­ing in­vestors in­clude Great­Point Ven­tures, Her­itage Provider Net­work and Ri­vas Cap­i­tal.

Po­laris’ Amy Schul­man and Gouw are join­ing the board. 

“This fundraise will pro­pel our pipeline in NASH and can­cer in­to the clin­ic, cat­alyze our prod­uct en­gine to ad­dress dis­eases with high glob­al bur­den, and ad­vance part­ner­ships with phar­ma for re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing of drug re­sponse in pa­tients,” not­ed Bha­tia in a state­ment.

Sangee­ta Bha­tia. MIT LAB­O­RA­TO­RY FOR MUL­TI­SCALE RE­GEN­ER­A­TIVE TECH­NOLO­GIES

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 That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled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.

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.