A lit­tle over a year ago, Take­da lined up a deal to col­lab­o­rate with a low-pro­file San Diego up­start called Prometheus Bio­sciences on a string of new drugs for in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease. The phar­ma play­er tossed an undis­closed up­front and up to $420 mil­lion in mile­stones to get the al­liance start­ed.

These days, pre­clin­i­cal deals are com­mon, mile­stones are hazy mark­ers of fi­nan­cial health and the pact didn’t get a lot of at­ten­tion. But that ob­scu­ri­ty should start to dis­si­pate this week.

To­day, Prometheus, which had been cre­at­ed by the ac­qui­si­tion of Prometheus Labs by Pre­ci­sion IBD, is show­ing off a whop­ping $130 mil­lion raise from some fa­mil­iar biotech in­vestors jump­ing in to stretch the run­way at the 4-year-old pre­clin­i­cal biotech out in­to 2023, when CEO Mark McKen­na is promis­ing to have 3-4 IBD drugs ei­ther in the clin­ic or IND ready. The first of those clin­i­cal pro­grams is slat­ed to be­gin in a mat­ter of weeks, putting McKen­na’s team on track to their first round of hu­man da­ta.

Spun out of Cedars-Sinai Med­ical Cen­ter, the com­pa­ny built a con­sid­er­able por­tion of its sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion around the work of Stephan Tar­gan, an IBD spe­cial­ist who found­ed the IBD Cen­ter at the med­ical cen­ter some 28 years ago.

“We lever­aged this big da­ta set built over 20 years to iden­ti­fy new tar­gets in IBD and de­vel­op com­pan­ion di­ag­nos­tics for the drugs,” says McKen­na, cit­ing 20,000 sam­ples in the da­ta bank. Us­ing bioin­for­mat­ics tech, they have been work­ing on spot­light­ing tar­get­ed ther­a­peu­tics that can do bet­ter — in a much more durable fash­ion — than the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of IBD drugs.

Their lead pro­gram — PRA023 — is an an­ti-TL1A an­ti­body. But they’re not alone. Pfiz­er has a sim­i­lar pro­gram. But McKen­na has am­bi­tions to build a broad pipeline around IBD.

“We be­lieve we can put out a new tar­get every year,” he tells me.

You may re­call that McKen­na spent a 4-year stretch fo­cused on Bausch sub Sal­ix Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, where he won ku­dos for the turn­around work he ac­com­plished there. Once seen as a pos­si­ble suc­ces­sor to Bausch chief Joe Pa­pa, he now wants to take this new com­pa­ny all the way through to com­mer­cial­iza­tion. And Pa­pa has joined his board at Prometheus, watch­ing the work from a front-row seat.

It was Prometheus chair­man Tachi Ya­ma­da, a leg­end in the biotech busi­ness, who reached out to McKen­na to see if he would be in­ter­est­ed in run­ning Prometheus, af­ter watch­ing his work at Sal­ix.

Ya­ma­da, no doubt, al­so played a role in bring­ing to­geth­er a large syn­di­cate of in­vestors.

Even­tide As­set Man­age­ment and RTW In­vest­ments led the round with a slate of new in­vestors: Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors, Cor­morant Cap­i­tal, Cowen Health­care In­vest­ments, Point72 As­set man­age­ment and Irv­ing In­vestors. Then there are the ex­ist­ing in­vestors: As­cend Glob­al In­vest­ment Fund, Cedars-Sinai Med­ical Cen­ter and Nestlé SA. Joy Ghosh of Even­tide As­set Man­age­ment and Adam Stone of Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors will be join­ing the Prometheus board to watch over their in­vest­ments.

They’re back­ing a com­pa­ny that has grown to 125 staffers, in a mar­ket that might sug­gest they’re think­ing about an IPO.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.