A com­pa­ny work­ing to­ward the field of bac­te­rio­phages, de­vel­op­ing ther­a­pies that use bac­te­ria-killing virus­es, just pulled in a sig­nif­i­cant amount of new cap­i­tal.

Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics closed a $40.75 mil­lion Se­ries B, the Gaithers­burg, MD-based biotech an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing. The fi­nanc­ing was led by Deer­field Man­age­ment with par­tic­i­pa­tion from the Mayo Clin­ic, which had been a pre­vi­ous in­vestor.

Bac­te­rio­phages had long been an emp­ty area of re­search in the US, but the field has gar­nered more in­ter­est re­cent­ly as an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria con­tin­ue to grow in promi­nence. Some of the ear­li­est sci­en­tists to the­o­rize about their use have thought that find­ing the right phages can lead to bet­ter treat­ments for in­fec­tions and ill­ness­es.

The mol­e­cules are virus­es, and work the same way hu­man-in­fect­ing virus­es do — by en­ter­ing host cells and repli­cat­ing. But in this case the host cells are bac­te­ria. The ul­ti­mate goal of bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­py is to use phages to en­ter bac­te­r­i­al cells and cause them to burst, there­by cur­ing pa­tients.

It’s long proved a dif­fi­cult task, name­ly due to the lack of re­search and fund­ing which is fail­ing to help prove these the­o­ries. Many of the pa­tients who have re­ceived ex­per­i­men­tal bac­te­rio­phage ther­a­pies have al­so been ex­treme­ly sick, with the treat­ments used as last-re­sort op­tions.

Fur­ther­more, there’s the need to iden­ti­fy specif­i­cal­ly which bac­te­r­i­al strain is in­fect­ing pa­tients, and match­ing the right bac­te­rio­phage to the pathogen. Mis­match­ing the two not on­ly won’t help the sick pa­tients, but might end up caus­ing fur­ther harm as well.

For Adap­tive Phage, the funds will go to­ward the ther­a­pies that come out of its pro­pri­etary plat­form. The com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing a bank of phages, say­ing it’s col­lect­ed hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent virus­es so far that pro­vide broad cov­er­age against six high-pri­or­i­ty, drug-re­sis­tant bac­te­ria.

Adap­tive Phage’s two lead pro­grams are to treat pros­thet­ic joint in­fec­tion and di­a­bet­ic foot os­teomyelitis, and they al­so plan to use some funds to ad­vance a sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty test to more quick­ly iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial phage ther­a­pies. The com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy was orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped by the Pen­ta­gon’s biode­fense pro­gram, and Adap­tive Phage ac­quired it in 2017.

Deer­field is no stranger to this area ei­ther, as it bought out Melin­ta in March 2020 af­ter the an­tibi­otics com­pa­ny filed for Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy. The deal turned over con­trol to Deer­field in ex­change for the $140 mil­lion of se­nior debt it holds in the com­pa­ny.

So­cial: Greg Mer­ril, Adap­tive Phage Ther­a­peu­tics CEO (Adap­tive Phage)

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.

Biopharma’s resident antibody-drug conjugate expert Seagen has scored a clutch of oncology approvals in recent years, finding gold in what are known as “third-gen” ADCs. Now, another of their partnered conjugates is ready for prime time.

The FDA on Monday handed an accelerated approval to Seagen and Genmab’s Tivdak (tisotumab vedotin-tftv, or “TV”) in second-line patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer who previously progressed after chemotherapy rather than PD-(L)1 systemic therapy, the companies said in a release.

Illumina Ventures closed off its second investment fund with a total commitment of $325 million, offering fresh fuel to back a slate of startups that have already included a smorgasbord of companies, covering everything from diagnostics to biotech drug development and genomics.

Fund II brings the total investment under Illumina Ventures’ oversight to $560 million, which has been focused on early-stage companies. And it has a transatlantic portfolio that includes SQZ, Twist and Encoded Therapeutics.