More than a year af­ter rais­ing $105 mil­lion in a pri­vate fi­nanc­ing round, Nim­bus Ther­a­peu­tics is back with its next haul as it con­sid­ers its next steps, thanks to Bris­tol My­ers Squibb.

The com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry biotech, co-found­ed in 2009 by VC Bruce Booth, an­nounced its most re­cent fi­nanc­ing round Mon­day worth $125 mil­lion — Nim­bus’ fifth big fi­nanc­ing in the last sev­en years.

CEO Jeb Keiper tells End­points News that the fi­nanc­ing will sup­port Nim­bus’ en­tire pipeline, in­clud­ing its lead can­di­dates and pre­clin­i­cal ef­forts. At the biotech’s fore­front is its TYK2 pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly in a Phase IIb study for pso­ri­a­sis. And ac­cord­ing to Keiper, the biotech is run­ning hot in its at­tempt to get its TYK2 drug past the reg­u­la­to­ry fin­ish line — cour­tesy of Bris­tol My­ers beat­ing them to the punch with its own TYK2 drug just last week, now brand­ed as So­tyk­tu, for pso­ri­a­sis.

The ad­di­tion­al bonus with this par­tic­u­lar ap­proval is that there was no black box warn­ing hand­ed out, a more preva­lent ef­fect of drugs re­lat­ed to the JAK fam­i­ly.

While Keiper said that Nim­bus had been bull­ish about BMS’ deu­cravac­i­tinib and its odds of suc­cess, he tout­ed in­vestor op­ti­mism in Nim­bus, adding, “I think the group of in­vestors be­hind this fi­nanc­ing is re­al­ly ex­cit­ed that we be­lieve we could have the best in class mol­e­cule.”

Nim­bus’ on­go­ing Phase IIb study, cur­rent­ly en­rolled with 250 or so pa­tients, will have a read­out by the end of the year, with plans to start a Phase III tri­al in pso­ri­a­sis next year. Be­yond pso­ri­a­sis, Nim­bus will be pur­su­ing the com­ple­tion of oth­er Phase IIb tri­als in mod­er­ate-to-se­vere plaque pso­ri­a­sis and ac­tive pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis on top of oth­er au­toim­mune in­di­ca­tions like IBD and lu­pus.

Oth­er can­di­dates in Nim­bus’ pipeline in­clude an HPK1 in­hibitor, which is cur­rent­ly in Phase I/II clin­i­cal tri­als.

The round in­cludes two new in­vestors: Bain Cap­i­tal Life Sci­ences and SV Health In­vestors. Oth­er pre­vi­ous in­vestors tagged along, in­clud­ing Ac­cess Biotech­nol­o­gy, At­las Ven­ture, BVF Part­ners L.P., Bill Gates, Light­stone Ven­tures, Pfiz­er Ven­tures, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment and SR One.

When asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an IPO — thanks to RA Cap­i­tal’s re­peat­ed in­vest­ments and the pro­cliv­i­ty of RA-backed biotechs to even­tu­al­ly jump to­wards Nas­daq — Keiper not­ed that the com­pa­ny will “nev­er say nev­er” in the con­text that an IPO has not been ruled out. How­ev­er, the CEO added that a jump to Nas­daq isn’t some­thing that the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly plan­ning on.

President Joe Biden made clear in his “finish the job” State of the Union address last night that one of those jobs to be finished is insulin prices.

Biden’s push again to tackle insulin prices, after Republicans rebuffed the idea last summer and just after Biden won Medicare drug price negotiations/caps via the Inflation Reduction Act, shows how heavily he’s leaning into this work.

Six weeks into his new role at the helm of Teva Pharmaceutical, Richard Francis said it’s time to “get back to growth,” starting with a good look at the company’s priorities.

The chief executive has kicked off a strategic review, he announced during Teva’s quarterly call, which will continue over the next several months and produce results sometime in the middle of 2023. That means some pipeline cuts may be in store, he told Endpoints News, while declining to offer much more detail.

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf joined the heads of the CDC and NIH in the hot seat today before a key House subcommittee, explaining that there needs to be a much faster, more coordinated way to oversee vaccine safety, and that foreign biopharma inspections, halted for years due to the pandemic, are slowly ramping up again.

Califf, who stressed to the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health that the CDC also needs better data, made clear that the FDA’s ability to monitor the safety of vaccines “would also benefit greatly by a coordinated federal public health data reporting authority.”