Not two months af­ter launch­ing out of RA Cap­i­tal’s in­cu­ba­tor, Eliem Ther­a­peu­tics is re­turn­ing to the firm — and oth­ers — to raise an­oth­er heap of cash. And this time, an IPO could po­ten­tial­ly be in the works.

Eliem has put to­geth­er a $60 mil­lion Se­ries B round co-led by RA Cap­i­tal as it seeks to fur­ther ad­vance two lead clin­i­cal can­di­dates across four tri­als. The biotech de­clined an in­ter­view and fur­ther de­clined to com­ment on an emailed ques­tion re­gard­ing fi­nanc­ing plans, sug­gest­ing they may be hun­ker­ing down in prepa­ra­tion for an S-1 fil­ing with the SEC.

Though the Se­ries B proved to be small­er than the $80 mil­lion launch round in March, Eliem has an­nounced $140 mil­lion in funds be­tween the 60-day span of the two an­nounce­ments.

Eliem spawned out of con­ver­sa­tions from RA man­ag­ing di­rec­tor An­drew Levin and long­time pain re­searcher Va­lerie Moris­set, who had re­cent­ly re­tired from biotech to start a new chap­ter in the VC world. Dis­cus­sions re­volved around the pro­drug of an en­do­cannabi­noid known as palmi­toylethanolamide, or PEA, and af­ter ini­tial skep­ti­cism Moris­set agreed to hop on board as pres­i­dent and CSO.

The pro­drug, dubbed ETX-810, is the lead pro­gram in a pipeline of four neu­ro as­sets Eliem even­tu­al­ly hopes to bring to pa­tients. It’s part of a fam­i­ly of en­do­cannabi­noid hope­fuls that have thus far come up short for Big Phar­mas look­ing to in­vest in the area. Part of what drew Moris­set to the com­pa­ny, she told End­points News in March, was the sheer amount of clin­i­cal lit­er­a­ture show­ing how PEA could be used for chron­ic pain con­di­tions.

They’re hope­ful that the pro­drug ap­proach can lead to bet­ter re­sults. ETX-810 is cur­rent­ly in two Phase IIa stud­ies look­ing at di­a­bet­ic pe­riph­er­al neu­ro­path­ic pain and lum­bosacral radic­u­lar pain, and Eliem is now putting timeta­bles on the da­ta read­outs for the first half of 2022.

In ad­di­tion to the pain-re­lat­ed in­di­ca­tions, how­ev­er, Eliem is al­so work­ing on a host of oth­er CNS can­di­dates. Next up be­hind ETX-810 is a GA­BA-pos­i­tive al­losteric mod­u­la­tor, al­so from RA Cap­i­tal, which the com­pa­ny is call­ing ETX-155. Eliem plans to take this pro­gram in­to two Phase IIa stud­ies for ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der and hor­mone-re­lat­ed de­pres­sive dis­or­ders, as well as a Phase Ib tri­al for epilep­sy.

Da­ta here are ex­pect­ed in the sec­ond half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, re­spec­tive­ly.

Fur­ther down the pipeline are two pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams: a Kv7.⅔ chan­nel open­er dis­cov­ered in-house, where Eliem hopes to go in­to pain and epilep­sy, and an­oth­er ear­ly-stage re­search pro­gram po­ten­tial­ly for gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion.

In­ter­me­di­ate Cap­i­tal Group co-led the round with RA Cap­i­tal. Oth­er in­vestors in­clud­ed Ac­cess Biotech­nol­o­gy, Sam­lyn Cap­i­tal, Acorn Bioven­tures and LifeArc.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

While European companies, including BioNTech, are focused on increasing vaccine access to African countries by setting up vaccine manufacturing facilities, the European Union is looking westward to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaking at a press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pédro Sanchez, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU is launching a new initiative for vaccines and medicines manufacturing in Latin America, to get drugs to Latin America and the Caribbean faster.

GSK, newly branded and soon-to-be demerged, shared interim results from its Phase II trial on its chronic hepatitis B treatment, one that it says has the “potential to lead to a functional cure.”

At a presentation at the EASL International Liver Congress, GSK shared that in around 450 patients who received its hep B drug bepirovirsen for 24 weeks, just under 30% had hepatitis B surface antigen and viral DNA levels that were too low to detect.

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.