Less than a month af­ter of­fer­ing a glimpse at ear­ly clin­i­cal da­ta for its lead can­cer im­munother­a­py at vir­tu­al ES­MO, Sen­sei Bio­ther­a­peu­tics has reeled in $28.5 mil­lion to wade deep­er in­to Phase II.

The Mary­land-based biotech, for­mer­ly known as Panacea, is look­ing to ex­pand Phase II tri­als for SNS-301, an en­gi­neered in­ac­ti­vat­ed bac­te­rio­phage de­signed to “awak­en” the im­mune sys­tem. “Right now we’re re­al­ly fo­cused on adding ad­di­tion­al Phase II clin­i­cal and trans­la­tion­al da­ta to sup­port SNS-301,” CEO John Celebi said.

The round, which the com­pa­ny is call­ing a Se­ries AA, fol­lows sev­er­al seed rounds, Celebi said. It was led by Cam­bri­an Bio­phar­ma and H&S Ven­tures, and will fund the Phase II de­vel­op­ment of SNS-301. It will al­so help ready the biotech’s ear­li­er can­di­dates for IND ap­pli­ca­tions, which could come some­time in the next 12 to 18 months. That in­cludes SNS-401, a po­ten­tial vac­cine cock­tail against Merkel cell car­ci­no­ma, and SNS-VISTA, an an­ti­body-based ther­a­peu­tic.

Last sum­mer, Sen­sei joined forces with As­traZeneca to test SNS-301 in com­bi­na­tion with Imfinzi in two Phase II tri­als across mul­ti­ple sol­id tu­mors. And at ES­MO, the biotech read out ear­ly da­ta from a Phase I/II study of the can­di­date and Mer­ck’s Keytru­da for ad­vanced head and neck can­cer. One of 9 pa­tients eval­u­at­ed at the time had a par­tial re­sponse, with a tu­mor re­duc­tion of 43%, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

“The ap­proval of pem­brolizum­ab is an ex­cit­ing event for pa­tients, but clear­ly there’s a lot of room for im­prove­ment,” Celebi said, cit­ing a Keynote-012 study which showed Mer­ck’s drug achieved an 18% over­all re­sponse in pa­tients with metasta­t­ic squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma of the head and neck.

CMO Marie-Louise Fjaell­skog not­ed in a state­ment:

To date, we have ob­served promis­ing clin­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that is cor­re­lat­ed with im­mune re­sponse for SNS-301, in­clud­ing a par­tial re­sponse in a pa­tient with PD-L1-neg­a­tive dis­ease. This ini­tial da­ta from 9 pa­tients pro­vides us with the ra­tio­nale to con­tin­ue ex­plor­ing its safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy in 1^st and 2^nd line SC­CHN pa­tients.

Fu­ture Ven­tures, Chris­t­ian Anger­may­er’s Ape­iron In­vest­ment Group, and Pre­sight Ven­tures al­so chipped in to the round.

“With ex­pe­ri­enced man­age­ment and sci­en­tif­ic teams, Sen­sei is well po­si­tioned to be­come a leader in next gen­er­a­tion of im­mune-on­col­o­gy ther­a­peu­tics,” Cam­bri­an Bio­phar­ma CEO James Pey­er said in a state­ment.

When Regeneron scored an early approval for lipid lowering antibody Evkeeza back in February, the drugmaker cracked open a new pathway to lower abnormally high cholesterol levels. Now, Regeneron is chasing high triglycerides as well with some promising mid-stage data — but will genetic restrictions limit the drug’s use?

Regeneron’s Evkeeza (evinacumab) cut median triglyceride levels by more than 800 mg/dL (57%) in patients with a rare disorder causing abnormally high triglyceride levels compared with an overall increase of 50 mg/dL (1.8%) in participants on placebo, according to Phase II data presented Sunday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

AstraZeneca hasn’t seen many setbacks in recent months for SGLT2 inhibitor Farxiga, which broke ground in heart failure and kidney disease regardless of diabetes diagnosis. But the British drugmaker had to admit defeat in taking Farxiga into Covid-19, but follow-up results add a bit of a silver lining to that trial’s safety data.

Of hospitalized Covid-19 patients dosed with AstraZeneca’s Farxiga, 11.2% experienced an organ failure or died after 30 days of therapy compared with 13.8% of those given placebo, according to follow-up data from the DARE-19 study revealed Sunday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb’s non-warfarin blood thinner Eliquis has raced out to become the most prescribed drug of its class on the market — even overtaking warfarin’s long-time lead. But in tricky-to-treat patients after a valve replacement, an investigator-sponsored study couldn’t turn up benefit and raised a troubling safety signal.

Eliquis failed to show benefit over standard of care in preventing serious clinical outcomes after a transaortic valve replacement (TAVR) and was linked to an “unexplained signal” in a subset of populations with a higher rate of non-CV deaths who did not need blood thinners apart from the surgery, according to data presented Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.

If Novartis learned one thing from its interaction with the FDA over its latest heart failure approval for Entresto, it was that missing a primary endpoint may not be the nail in the coffin. Now, Entresto has missed again on a late-stage study in high-risk heart patients, and it’s already sowing the seeds for a path forward regardless.

Novartis’ Entresto couldn’t best standard-of-care ramipril in staving off a composite of deaths and heart failure events in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction and/or pulmonary congestion who have had a prior heart attack, according to topline data from the Phase III PARADISE-MI study revealed Saturday at the virtual American College of Cardiology meeting.