Take­da Ven­tures and Or­biMed have helped pump $61 mil­lion in­to a New York biotech join­ing the rush to dra­mat­i­cal­ly ex­pand the CRISPR tool kit.

One cru­cial com­po­nent in the CRISPR gene edit­ing process is a nu­cle­ase that cuts the tar­get DNA once it’s led there by a guide RNA. Cas9 is the most well known and broad­ly used among them, al­though re­searchers have been com­ing up with a va­ri­ety of al­ter­na­tives. The one that Emen­do Bio­ther­a­peu­tics will be ad­vanc­ing with its new fund­ing is dubbed OM­NI.

Their class of “op­ti­mized” en­zymes, ac­cord­ing to Emen­do, opens a new lev­el of pre­ci­sion un­at­tain­able with old­er ap­proach­es.

“For ex­am­ple, to treat dom­i­nant in­di­ca­tions, one al­lele needs to be edit­ed while leav­ing the oth­er one in­tact. Cur­rent CRISPR nu­cle­as­es are not spe­cif­ic enough to do this,” the biotech wrote on its web­site. “Dom­i­nant in­di­ca­tions are the vast ma­jor­i­ty of ge­net­ic dis­eases, high­light­ing the need for a nov­el ap­proach.”

That plat­form tech has at­tract­ed Take­da to a part­ner­ship in which Emen­do will syn­the­size OM­NI nu­cle­as­es for two undis­closed tar­gets. In re­turn, the Japan­ese phar­ma gi­ant agreed to par­tic­i­pate in this new fi­nanc­ing along­side Or­biMed Ad­vi­sors, Or­biMed Is­rael Part­ners and AnGes.

Tokyo and Os­a­ka-based AnGes was re­spon­si­ble for $50 mil­lion of the raise, up­ping its stake in Emen­do to 32%, ac­cord­ing to a fil­ing last month.

“Mak­ing Emen­do an af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­ny of AnGes will as­sist us in the de­vel­op­ment of bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals through genome edit­ing, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to fur­ther ex­pand our­de­vel­op­ment pipeline as the fourth pil­lar of our op­er­a­tions af­ter HGF gene ther­a­py,nu­cle­ic-acid med­i­cines, and DNA vac­cines,” AnGes wrote.

Emen­do, which has an R&D op­er­a­tion in Is­rael, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Seat­tle Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal on its lead pro­gram se­vere con­gen­i­tal neu­trope­nia. Oth­er pro­grams in pri­ma­ry im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy, bone mar­row fail­ure, in­her­it­ed eye dis­ease and can­cer are al­so at­tached to pres­ti­gious aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners.

So­cial im­age: Take­da

Stephen Hahn went before a Senate committee Wednesday and declared he’s fighting. “Every one of the decisions we have reached has been made by career FDA scientists based on science and data, not politics,” he exclaimed, adding that “FDA will not permit any pressure from anyone to change that. I will fight for science.”

A few hours later, he was undermined by President Donald Trump when a reporter asked if he was okay with stricter vaccine guidelines that the FDA was said to be cooking up. “That has to be approved by the White House. We may or may not approve it. That sounds like a political move,” he decided.

It’s been less than a month since Lumen Bioscience announced a $16 million Series B to engineer spirulina — a nutrient-packed super food — for diseases like traveler’s diarrhea, norovirus and C. difficile colitis. And now, the biotech has pulled in another $4 million to do the same for Covid-19.

The approach is quite similar to other gastrointestinal targets the company is pursuing, co-founders and Brian Finrow and Jim Roberts said. The Seattle-based company is working on a camelid antibody cocktail to combat GI infection common among Covid-19 patients. In a study published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, a majority of Covid-19 patients showed GI and respiratory symptoms, and 25% had only GI symptoms.

About four months after completing an extension to its Series A, Monte Rosa Therapeutics is putting its next foot forward with another heap of cash.

The Boston-based biotech is back with $96 million in Series B financing with a goal to get its lead program ready for IND-enabling studies by the end of the year. Though Monte Rosa is keeping its specific target a secret for now, the company has been researching how to utilize its protein degradation technology in breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, among other areas.

When the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets next month to discuss the development and authorization of Covid-19 vaccines, the chairwoman won’t be there.

Hana El Sahly has recused herself from the expert panel’s review of the topic, citing her role as a lead investigator in Moderna’s Phase III trial, Reuters reported. An associate professor of virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, El Sahly was appointed the chairwoman last year.