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.

Whether patients are immunocompromised or just don’t like needles, one fledgling Australian biotech says it has an alternative to Covid-19 vaccines that doesn’t involve a jab in the arm — and on Tuesday, it pulled in a fresh round of funding to take it into the clinic.

ENA Respiratory, which spun out of ENA Therapeutics last year, has pulled in nearly $24.7 million (AU $30 million) to advance its nasal spray for respiratory viral infections, the company said Tuesday.

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The SPAC train has slowed down since the extraordinarily high levels from late 2020 into early this year, but Tuesday saw the filing of a new blank-check company targeting the life sciences industry.

Jatt Acquisition submitted its SEC paperwork Tuesday, penciling in an estimated raise of $120 million as it sets its sights on a reverse merger partner. The SPAC is run by Someit Sidhu, a co-founder of Pathios Therapeutics, as well as CEO of Akaza Bioscience and Izana Bioscience. Sidhu will control about 97% of the blank-check company’s shares, per the S-1.

Harith Rajagopalan compared the way type 2 diabetes is managed to sticking your fingers in a dam that’s leaking from a number of places.

You can take drugs to lower your blood sugar, cholesterol, or blood pressure, but you’re not addressing what he says is the core issue — the metabolic abnormality that causes the disease.

“We’re so busy plugging the holes in the dam, we don’t have time to see that the whole infrastructure is at risk,” he said. “That infrastructure is a full-body systemic metabolic abnormality called metabolic syndrome, that we’re ignoring while we’re so busy trying to treat all of the individual symptoms of the condition.”

Scientists have come up with the first evidence that Regeneron’s antibody cocktail, which has so far only been authorized for the outpatient setting, may reduce deaths of hospitalized Covid-19 patients — albeit only a subset.

The combination of casirivimab and imdevimab is the subject of the latest data cut from RECOVERY, the large-scale UK-based trial testing a variety of potential treatments. In total, 9,785 patients hospitalized with Covid-19 were enrolled in this arm of the study and were randomly assigned to receive either usual care plus the intravenous combo or usual care alone.