A biotech cen­tered on treat­ing fi­bro­sis — born out of Mass Gen­er­al and Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal — has re­ceived a fi­nan­cial boost.

Ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing, the com­pa­ny has raised $31,761,186 in its lat­est fund­ing round, which in­cludes 17 in­vestors. The fil­ing lists six names at­tached to the com­pa­ny, in­clud­ing Mered­ith Fish­er, a part­ner at Mass Gen­er­al Brigham Ven­tures and Me­di­ar’s act­ing CEO.

Oth­er names in the fil­ing in­clude Pe­ter Park­er, the man­ag­ing gen­er­al part­ner at Mis­sion Bio­Cap­i­tal, and Michael Baran, a part­ner at Pfiz­er Ven­tures, who are mem­bers of Me­di­ar’s board. Nan­di­ta Shangari, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the No­var­tis Ven­ture Fund; Maina Bhaman, a part­ner at Sofinno­va Ven­tures; and An­dreas Ju­rgeit, a part­ner at Gimv, were al­so list­ed on the doc­u­ment.

End­points News has reached out for more in­for­ma­tion on the fund­ing. In an email, Fish­er said that Me­di­ar is not com­ment­ing at this time.

Me­di­ar, which was found­ed by Mass Gen­er­al Brigham Ven­tures and re­searchers from the in­sti­tu­tion in 2019, is still in the pre­clin­i­cal stage. The biotech is de­vel­op­ing can­di­dates to try and halt or re­verse fi­bro­sis by us­ing the cell known as the my­ofi­brob­last.

The biotech raised a seed ex­ten­sion in 2021, which brought on Pfiz­er Ven­tures and Ono Ven­ture In­vest­ment as new mem­bers to bring the to­tal back­ing to $20 mil­lion. Mass Gen­er­al Brigham Ven­tures led the ini­tial seed round in 2019, along with oth­er in­vestors, to sup­port a dis­cov­ery plat­form and the de­vel­op­ment of an­ti­body treat­ments.

This was not Pfiz­er’s first go-around with the com­pa­ny. In 2019, Me­di­ar was se­lect­ed as the win­ner of the Pfiz­er Gold­en Tick­et Pro­gram, pro­vid­ing the biotech with some bench space at Lab­Cen­tral, a shared lab­o­ra­to­ry space that is meant to act as a launch­pad for star­tups. The site is lo­cat­ed in Cam­bridge, MA, and is close to Pfiz­er’s pres­ence in Kendall Square.

Last year, Ex-Kymab CEO Si­mon Sturge was al­so brought on­to the team at Me­di­ar as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Novartis’ sickle cell drug, approved in 2019 and branded as Adakveo, has failed an ongoing Phase III, according to preliminary results.

The Swiss pharma giant unveiled early data from the ongoing STAND Phase III study on Friday, saying that crizanlizumab showed no statistically significant difference between the drug at two different dose levels compared to placebo in annualized rates of vaso-occlusive crises that lead to a healthcare visit over the first year since being randomized into the trial.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.