Dyne Ther­a­peu­tics start­ed out last April with a mod­est $50 mil­lion to mine tar­get­ed mus­cle dis­ease ther­a­pies from its in-house con­ju­gate tech­nol­o­gy. The biotech has now con­vinced more in­vestors that it’s got gems on its hands, clos­ing $115 mil­lion in fresh fi­nanc­ing to push its next-gen oligonu­cleotide drugs in­to the clin­ic.

Joshua Brumm

Vi­da Ven­tures and Sur­vey­or Cap­i­tal led the round, joined by a group of oth­er new back­ers in­clud­ing Welling­ton Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny, Lo­gos Cap­i­tal and Franklin Tem­ple­ton.

At­las — where Dyne was in­cu­bat­ed — al­so re­turned along­side For­bion and MPM.

Ste­fan Vi­torovic, who co-found­ed Vi­da with Arie Bellde­grun and oth­ers, took the lead on this one. Dyne’s FORCE plat­form match­es ex­act­ly their ap­petite for bold vi­sions in the fu­ture of med­i­cine, with the po­ten­tial to de­liv­er “life-chang­ing out­comes” for pa­tients with mus­cle dis­eases, he said.

This is how the biotech plans to do it: By link­ing an an­ti­body to an oligonu­cleotide, Dyne’s ther­a­pies are en­gi­neered to hone in on mus­cle cells and de­grade on­ly dis­ease-caus­ing RNA, there­by avoid­ing sys­temic tox­i­c­i­ty is­sues.

Ro­mesh Sub­ra­man­ian

Ro­mesh Sub­ra­man­ian, a co-founder of what is now Trans­late Bio, helped launch the op­er­a­tions as an en­tre­pre­neur-in-res­i­dence at At­las. He’s since hand­ed the CEO ba­ton to Joshua Brumm and moved to the CSO post.

“When you de­liv­er a naked oli­go, very lit­tle gets to the mus­cle,” he told C&EN back in 2019.

That means a lack of speci­fici­ty and po­ten­tial safe­ty prob­lems for drugs like Sarep­ta’s con­tro­ver­sial Ex­ondys 51. While Dyne is aim­ing di­rect­ly at that mar­ket with its Duchenne mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy pro­gram, its ini­tial fo­cus is on my­oton­ic dy­s­tro­phy.

Trail­ing close­ly is a third ther­a­py for fa­cioscapu­lo­humer­al mus­cu­lar dy­s­tro­phy, fol­lowed by dis­cov­ery work in the car­diac and meta­bol­ic are­nas.

Su­san­na High

How would the ap­proach com­pare to gene ther­a­pies, which are crop­ping up at Sarep­ta and oth­er new­er play­ers fo­cused on mus­cle dis­eases? We didn’t get a chance to ask Dyne, which is shy­ing away from in­ter­views this morn­ing — per­haps a sign of up­com­ing plans in a boom­ing biotech IPO mar­ket.

Un­der Brumm, Dyne has been on a bit of a hir­ing spree re­cent­ly, poach­ing Su­san­na High from blue­bird to be COO, ap­point­ing ex-Cel­gene ex­ec Daniel Wil­son as VP of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and scoop­ing De­bra Feld­man from Sage Ther­a­peu­tics as head of reg­u­la­to­ry.

The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended nine drugs for approval this week while also giving thumbs up for six expanded indications, including Novo Nordisk’s approved obesity medication Wegovy for younger people. Wegovy is already approved as an obesity treatment in the EU for adults, and the new indication would allow prescriptions for adolescents aged 12 and older.

RNA biotech GreenLight Biosciences has been handed an offer for potential acquisition.

GreenLight said in a release that it has received a non-binding “indication of interest” from Fall Line Endurance Fund to acquire GreenLight’s capital stock for $0.60 per share in cash. The release said any potential agreement between the two parties would depend on certain conditions.

Through a special committee, the biotech will evaluate the offer but added there’s no certainty a deal will go forward. GreenLight will also not make any more announcements until a deal comes through or “otherwise determines” a statement is necessary.

A public T cell biotech’s chief executive has decided to leave the company.

TScan Therapeutics said Friday morning that CEO David Southwell stepped down earlier this week, leaving both his chief executive and board member roles. Filling in is Gavin MacBeath, the company’s CSO and COO. He became the acting CEO on Tuesday, and will continue to remain CSO and COO, TScan’s announcement read.

The German life science group Sartorius will be picking up French contract manufacturer Polyplus for the price of €2.4 billion, or $2.6 billion.

On Friday, Sartorius announced the acquisition through its French subgroup, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, which will be acquiring Polyplus from private investors ARCHIMED and WP GG Holdings IV. Polyplus has 270 employees and produces materials and components that go into making viral vectors that are used in cell and gene therapies. This includes DNA/RNA reagents as well as plasmid DNA. Polyplus has locations in France, Belgium, China and the US.