Star­na Ther­a­peu­tics has emerged with 150 mil­lion Yuan, or about $24 mil­lion, in Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing to take on two dif­fi­cult ar­eas in biotech R&D: RSV and id­io­path­ic pul­monary fi­bro­sis.

The Suzhou, Chi­na-based biotech se­cured the funds to move an mR­NA vac­cine for RSV in­to the clin­ic next year and a ther­a­peu­tic for IPF some­time af­ter that, CEO Rongkuan Frank Hu told End­points News. Hu was pre­vi­ous­ly a gen­er­al man­ag­er at RNA tech and ser­vices biotech GenePhar­ma and, be­fore that, a post­doc at UT South­west­ern Med­ical Cen­ter. His co-founder is Qiang Cheng, a PI at Peking Uni­ver­si­ty, he said.

The fi­nanc­ing will sup­port pre­clin­i­cal work to se­cure the biotech’s first IND for the RSV tri­al, like­ly to take place in Chi­na, Hu said. The com­pa­ny was found­ed in Au­gust 2021 based on the tech from Cheng, the CEO said.

The 34-em­ploy­ee com­pa­ny will al­so open a site in Shang­hai in the com­ing months, the CEO said. Much of the city has been closed be­cause of Covid-19 in re­cent weeks.

Star­na will eye its next round of fi­nanc­ing in 2023 and could ink col­lab­o­ra­tions with biotechs in the US to li­cense out the US rights to its as­sets, Hu said. The biotech will look at on­col­o­gy as an area, as well.

RSV is a hot space among Big Phar­ma right now, with Pfiz­er bet­ting $525 mil­lion on RSV biotech Re­Vi­ral af­ter hav­ing racked up back-to-back break­through ther­a­py nods for its own RSV vac­cine. Mean­while, Sanofi and As­traZeneca tout­ed new da­ta on their at­tempt ear­li­er this month and GSK ran in­to three tri­al paus­es in Feb­ru­ary for its ma­ter­nal RSV vac­cine.

Clos­er to home, Star­na will have to catch up to RSV vac­cine ri­val Nu­ance Phar­ma. The Shang­hai-based biotech li­censed Bavar­i­an Nordic’s poxvirus-based vac­cine in March to study the jab in a Phase III study in Chi­nese main­land, Hong Kong, Macau, Tai­wan, South Ko­rea and cer­tain South­east Asian coun­tries.

Mean­while, in IPF, Star­na is en­ter­ing a dif­fi­cult R&D land­scape. The dis­ease leads to scar­ring of tis­sue that sup­ports the lung’s air sacs, im­ped­ing a per­son’s breath­ing. The drug de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try has yield­ed on­ly two ap­proved drugs: Roche’s Es­bri­et and Boehringer In­gel­heim’s Ofev, both green­lit in 2014. Roche has lawyered up against gener­ics mak­ers.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

In a bid to increase its market share in China, Amgen has agreed to a partnership with a Shanghai biotech — a collaboration and out-licensing agreement for two of its drugs.

Amgen and Fosun Pharma announced a deal Monday in a bid to increase Amgen’s presence in the country. The stated goal so far is to commercialize Amgen’s blockbuster psoriasis drug Otezla alongside Parsabiv, a drug for secondary hyperparathyroidism in adults with chronic kidney disease and on a specific type of dialysis.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.