Hear­ing is get­ting to be a trendy R&D top­ic in biotech.

Eight months af­ter putting to­geth­er a $7.5 mil­lion seed round and lin­ing up AAV gene ther­a­py tech­nol­o­gy out of Mass­a­chu­setts Eye and Ear and Lon­za, the start­up Ak­ou­os has come back with a fast $50 mil­lion A round de­signed to get them through their pre­clin­i­cal phase and up to the thresh­old of their first hu­man study.

Michael McKen­na

Ini­tial­ly fo­cused on a rare ge­net­ic mu­ta­tion that leads to deaf­ness in new­borns, Ak­ou­os CEO Man­ny Si­mons tells me that the biotech has its eyes on a line­up of mono­genet­ic ail­ments re­lat­ed to hear­ing. And they’re look­ing to re­store hear­ing with a pipeline of ther­a­pies, even­tu­al­ly ex­pand­ing in­to broad­er caus­es of hear­ing loss for an ag­ing so­ci­ety.

“Where we’ve been fo­cused is mak­ing sure we are able to de­liv­er vec­tor to sen­so­ry cells through­out the cochlea in the hu­man ear,” the shell-like sphere where vi­bra­tions be­come sound, says Si­mons, a biotech vet with stints at Voy­ager — an­oth­er gene ther­a­py spe­cial­ist — and Warp Dive. This is his first turn run­ning a biotech, and his back­ground helped him line up a ma­jor league crew of back­ers.

Arthur Tzian­a­bos

5AM and New En­ter­prise As­so­ci­ates led the round, with Part­ners In­no­va­tion Fund step­ping in with new in­vestors:Sofinno­va Ven­tures, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and No­var­tis Ven­ture Fund.

Like most star­tups, the CEO at Ak­ou­os is stay­ing qui­et about their first tar­get for now. But af­ter hav­ing time to ex­plore their tech in an­i­mal mod­els, in­clud­ing non-hu­man pri­mates, he’s al­so ea­ger to note that their first pro­gram puts them in the open­ing stages of ex­plor­ing a field with 150 mono­genet­ic trig­gers for hear­ing loss.

Christo­pher Smith

Ak­ou­os is join­ing a rel­a­tive­ly small but grow­ing group of drug de­vel­op­ers fo­cused on hear­ing in a world where deaf­ness is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly com­mon.

Not far from where Ak­ou­os makes its home, Deci­bel has been pur­su­ing its own ap­proach to build­ing a tech plat­form for new drugs to re­store lost hear­ing. Just weeks ago Steve Holtz­man and his crew pieced to­geth­er a $55 mil­lion C round — though they’re de­vel­op­ing a pipeline of com­pounds. Just this morn­ing Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics spot­light­ed a move in­to a Phase I/II study for a hear­ing restora­tion drug. A host of aca­d­e­m­ic groups, mean­while, have been look­ing to de­liv­er a gene ther­a­py for hear­ing via a vec­tor — as that field steadi­ly deep­ens its roots fol­low­ing a land­mark ap­proval for Spark.

Si­mons is ex­pand­ing his team with the new mon­ey. One of his sci­en­tif­ic founders at Har­vard, Michael McKen­na, is com­ing on as chief med­ical of­fi­cer. And he has some fa­mil­iar biotech/ven­ture ex­ecs join­ing the board: Arthur Tzian­a­bos, the CEO of Ho­mol­o­gy Med­i­cines, and Christo­pher Smith, for­mer CEO of Cochlear.

Im­age: Man­ny Si­mons. HAR­VARD BUSI­NESS SCHOOL via YOUTUBE

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.