Cin­Cor Phar­ma made some noise ear­li­er this year af­ter rais­ing $143 mil­lion in a Se­ries B in Oc­to­ber, thanks to a round led by Gen­er­al At­lantic. And now CEO Marc de Garidel, the for­mer chair­man and CEO of Ipsen who came on board the biotech in Ju­ly, is mov­ing for­ward — gun­ning for a spot on Nas­daq.

Jon Isaac­sohn

The Cincin­nati-based, Sofinno­va-backed biotech — found­ed in 2018 and spun out from par­ent com­pa­ny Cin­Rx Phar­ma — filed an S-1 on Fri­day, pen­cil­ing in $100 mil­lion for the raise. As for what the biotech plans to do with what­ev­er amount it ul­ti­mate­ly wants to raise, it’s all go­ing in­to Cin­Cor’s on­ly drug can­di­date: CIN-107, an oral al­dos­terone syn­thase in­hibitor that co-founders Jon Isaac­sohn and Cather­ine Pearce li­censed from Roche for ini­tial­ly $3 mil­lion back in 2019, ac­cord­ing to the S-1. Al­dos­terone is a hor­mone linked to in­creased blood pres­sure, and has been a tar­get of in­ter­est to treat hy­per­ten­sion.

Once CIN-107 reach­es cer­tain mile­stones, Cin­Cor will pay Roche an­oth­er $40 mil­lion, along with an ad­di­tion­al $175 mil­lion in sales mile­stones, plus roy­al­ties.

Cin­Cor is look­ing to ad­vance clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the drug and push the can­di­date through mul­ti­ple clin­i­cal tri­als for dif­fer­ent in­di­ca­tions: two Phase II tri­als and a Phase III tri­al for hy­per­ten­sion, a Phase II tri­al for hor­mone dis­or­der pri­ma­ry al­dos­tero­nism and yet an­oth­er Phase II tri­al for ame­lio­rat­ing com­pli­ca­tions of chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease. Any left­over funds will be used for gen­er­al cor­po­rate pur­pos­es.

Cur­rent­ly, the ma­jor stock­hold­ers in­clude Sofinno­va — both Sofinno­va Ven­ture Part­ners with more than 23% of the shares and Sofinno­va Cap­i­tal IX with ex­act­ly 17% of the shares, along­side 5AM Ven­tures-re­lat­ed en­ti­ties with 17%, Cin­Rx Phar­ma with 10.8% own­er­ship and Gen­er­al At­lantic with 10.6%.

The biotech has been bleed­ing mon­ey, like all star­tups — in 2019 and 2020, it had a net loss of $5 mil­lion and $22.3 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly. And as of the end of Sep­tem­ber this year, their ac­cu­mu­lat­ed deficit is a com­bined $48.3 mil­lion.

At this time, there is noth­ing on the hori­zon for an­oth­er drug in Cin­Cor’s pipeline. Once the biotech prices and goes pub­lic, it hopes to trade un­der the pro­posed tick­er $CINC.

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.

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.