A Stan­ford spin­out ex­plor­ing how fun­gi can be se­quenced to dis­cov­er new med­i­cines in on­col­o­gy and in­fec­tious dis­eases now has sig­nif­i­cant­ly more cash to do so.

Ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing, Hexa­gon Bio an­nounced the clos­ing of their Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing, pulling in $47 mil­lion from a group of in­vestors led by The Col­umn Group. The round, which al­so saw par­tic­i­pa­tion from 8VC and Two Sig­ma Ven­tures, will go to­ward cre­at­ing a pro­pri­etary ge­nomics data­base as well as build­ing out a drug dis­cov­ery team to de­vel­op the new com­pounds. Hexa­gon brought on Tod Smeal as its new CSO af­ter he served in the same po­si­tion at Lil­ly Re­search Labs.

“This is go­ing to take us in­to this next phase from com­pa­ny build­ing,” CEO Mau­reen Hil­len­mey­er told End­points News. “We’ve built this great plat­form, but now we’re at a stage where we’re re­al­ly fo­cused on tak­ing mol­e­cules to­wards the clin­ic.”

The tech that Hexa­gon has de­vel­oped aims to op­ti­mize the search for nat­ur­al prod­ucts with­in fun­gi that can serve as foun­da­tions for can­cer treat­ments, Hil­len­mey­er said. His­tor­i­cal­ly, such search­es have been “brute force” meth­ods re­quir­ing painstak­ing ef­forts to se­quence.

But Hexa­gon wants to pair da­ta min­ing with drug dis­cov­ery in or­der to find such nat­ur­al prod­ucts, al­so known as sec­ondary metabo­lites. Fun­gi pro­duce sec­ondary metabo­lites as self-de­fense mech­a­nisms, pro­tect­ing them­selves from dis­ease. Hil­len­mey­er’s goal is to ap­ply an AI al­go­rithm to se­quence and sift through mas­sive amounts of genome da­ta to try to de­ter­mine what oth­er fun­gi nat­u­ral­ly cul­ti­vate metabo­lites use­ful in even­tu­al can­cer ther­a­pies.

Smeal com­pared the task to check­ing out am­a­teur base­ball play­ers to draft for a cham­pi­onship team. The play­ers, or the metabo­lites, are all out there wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered, while the scouts and front of­fices — Hexa­gon’s plat­form and drug dis­cov­ery team, in this in­stance — try to de­ter­mine which have the most po­ten­tial.

“What’s ex­cit­ing about it is that, in the past, there’s al­ready been a lot of suc­cess in de­vel­op­ing drugs based on nat­ur­al prod­ucts but it was re­al­ly a non-sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach,” Smeal said. “Mau­reen’s team is in the process of go­ing through and sam­pling a huge di­ver­si­ty of the pos­si­ble agents that are out there. So it’s sort of a new fron­tier, but it’s be­ing done in a sys­tem­at­ic and ef­fi­cient way.”

Tod Smeal

Metabo­lites from fun­gi have been pro­duced be­fore, most no­tably peni­cillin in ad­di­tion to cho­les­terol-re­duc­ing statins. But while a rev­o­lu­tion­ary an­tibi­ot­ic, peni­cillin was dis­cov­ered by ac­ci­dent in the 1920s, and it took years for re­searchers to ful­ly se­quence the genomes used in statin-based med­i­cines.

That’s where Hexa­gon hopes the da­ta min­ing will pro­vide a huge boon, by cut­ting down the bulk search process it­self and get­ting pro­grams in­to the clin­ic at a faster clip.

“There’s about 5 mil­lion fun­gal genomes on the earth, of which on­ly about 5,000 have been se­quenced,” Hil­len­mey­er said. “Each of those genomes con­tains a huge amount of da­ta that we have to sift through to find what we call the nee­dle in the haystack: drugs that are use­ful for peo­ple.”

As of now, Hexa­gon says it’s too ear­ly to de­ter­mine what any treat­ment might end up look­ing like. Whether the com­pa­ny de­vel­ops an IV-based drug or a once-a-day pill, those de­ci­sions are still up in the air and will de­pend on what tar­gets the com­pa­ny ul­ti­mate­ly goes af­ter.

But one thing’s for cer­tain: Hexa­gon, be­liev­ing in its tech, is not go­ing to be picky.

“We’re fo­cused on on­col­o­gy, but ini­tial­ly we’re go­ing to be work­ing in an­ti-in­fec­tives and on­col­o­gy,” Smeal said. “We’re go­ing to be very op­por­tunis­tic, so de­pend­ing on what comes out of the plat­form, if there’s op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas, we will prob­a­bly ex­plore them as well.”

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.