The idea of tar­get­ing senes­cent cells to treat age-re­lat­ed dis­eases is con­tin­u­ing to gath­er steam, and Khosla Ven­tures is help­ing get the lat­est play go­ing with a $12 mil­lion seed round.

Rube­do Life Sci­ences is fo­cus­ing its ini­tial ef­forts on res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases such as id­io­path­ic pul­monary fi­bro­sis and ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease, with pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams in on­col­o­gy, neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tions, skele­tal mus­cle dis­or­ders and oth­ers to fol­low.

With the mon­ey, the goal is to move sev­er­al com­pounds in­to IND-en­abling stud­ies in pul­monary dis­eases start­ing next year.

“We were at­tract­ed to Rube­do by the speed of which the com­pa­ny is ad­vanc­ing mul­ti­ple lead com­pounds in­to IND-en­abling stud­ies across dif­fer­ent ar­eas of un­met med­ical need,” Zal Bil­imo­ria, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Refac­tor Cap­i­tal, said in a state­ment. The VC firm joined Longevi­ty Fund, Shan­da and oth­ers in the fi­nanc­ing.

Af­ter spend­ing some years at Stan­ford re­search­ing ag­ing and re­gen­er­a­tive med­i­cine, CEO Mar­co Quan­ta co-found­ed the com­pa­ny with 5AM Ven­ture Part­ners en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence Mark Gal­lop and Ju­lian Klein, who al­so did his grad­u­ate work at Stan­ford. The big idea at Rube­do has to do with a com­pu­ta­tion­al drug dis­cov­ery plat­form that comes up with small mol­e­cule can­di­dates to drug senes­cent cells.

Jun­shi leads Se­ries C+ in­fu­sion for Chi­nese syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty play­er

Chi­nese biotech Im­pact Ther­a­peu­tics has grabbed $50 mil­lion to fu­el more work on a slate of drugs that tar­get syn­thet­ic lethal­i­ty, in­clud­ing PARP and oth­er DNA dam­age re­sponse path­ways.

Jun­shi Bio­sciences — known it­self for a slate of an­ti­bod­ies aimed at can­cer, au­toim­mune dis­eases and more re­cent­ly, Covid-19 — led the Se­ries C+. Lil­ly Asia Ven­tures and Chi­na Sum­mit Cap­i­tal re­turned for more, flanked by new in­vestors AJ As­set Mgmt, Zhen­ji Cap­i­tal, West Foun­tain Glob­al Fund and Ausun Phar­ma.

“2021 is ex­pect­ed to be a sig­nif­i­cant turn point for us, as we are start­ing a se­ries of clin­i­cal tri­als in the US,” CEO Jun Bao said in a state­ment. — Am­ber Tong

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.

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.

The FDA has another adcomm coming down the pipeline — this time on Covid-19 oral antiviral molnupiravir.

The federal agency’s advisory committee will meet on November 30th to go over Merck and Ridgeback’s EUA request for their investigational antiviral drug, and discuss the available data supporting its use in Covid-19 patients.

This comes two weeks after Merck claimed that their antiviral pill reduced the chance that newly diagnosed Covid-19 patients would be hospitalized or die by 50%. The pharma made the announcement after interim data on 775 patients in their clinical trial showed the antiviral’s potential.