Sa­mumed came out with a bang a cou­ple years ago, when it bold­ly an­nounced a cou­ple of an­ti-ag­ing pro­grams and a $12 bil­lion val­u­a­tion. The San Diego com­pa­ny, which op­er­at­ed in stealth through much of its first decade, had no late-stage pro­grams and no prod­ucts on the mar­ket at the time, caus­ing quite the hub­bub when it claimed uni­corn sta­tus.

To­day, that com­pa­ny has added $438 mil­lion of eq­ui­ty back­ing to its cof­fers, clos­ing a mega-round that adds to its pre­vi­ous­ly raised $212 mil­lion. And yet again, the com­pa­ny an­nounced its pre-mon­ey val­u­a­tion for the lat­est round at a whop­ping $12 bil­lion. Even in these go-go days of biotech, the dol­lars are eye-pop­ping.

The fig­ure will cer­tain­ly raise eye­brows, but that’s noth­ing new for Os­man Kibar, Sa­mumed’s pas­sion­ate and col­or­ful CEO. I met with Kibar back in 2016, tour­ing the rather qui­et halls of Sa­mumed’s head­quar­ters. His en­thu­si­asm for the com­pa­ny’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al os­teoarthri­tis drug left an im­pres­sion on me, as he fer­vent­ly sketched graphs on a white­board to help me un­der­stand the WNT path­way.

“We’re sit­ting on a gold­mine, and this is on­ly the tip of the ice­berg,” Kibar said at the time. “If our strat­e­gy was to sell, no one could af­ford us.”

Found­ed in 2008, Sa­mumed now has eight pro­grams in its pipeline: two Phase II drugs, five in Phase I, and one pre­clin­i­cal. Its late-stage pro­grams are in os­teoarthri­tis and an­dro­ge­net­ic alope­cia (hair loss).

The com­pa­ny’s Phase II tri­al in OA en­rolled 455 pa­tients and went for a year. This pa­tient pop­u­la­tion in­cludes over 20 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who suf­fer from car­ti­lage wear­ing away in their joints and the re­sult­ing pain as­so­ci­at­ed with move­ment. There’s no re­al treat­ment be­sides pain med­ica­tion, which can ex­ac­er­bate the prob­lem (feel­ing less pain, pa­tients tend to move around more and fur­ther wear down that car­ti­lage). Af­ter re­ceiv­ing a sin­gle in­jec­tion, pa­tients showed car­ti­lage growth at the me­di­al joint.

But in Sa­mumed’s very brief press re­lease on this new round of fund­ing, the com­pa­ny did not men­tion where the mon­ey came from. That caught my at­ten­tion, be­cause when I first wrote about Sa­mumed, I thought the com­pa­ny’s lead in­vestors were odd choic­es: IKEA’s pri­vate ven­ture firm, anony­mous high-net-worth in­di­vid­u­als and a sin­gle ven­ture cap­i­tal firm called Vick­ers Ven­ture Part­ners. The biggest in­vestors are a fur­ni­ture com­pa­ny and a ven­ture firm with no his­to­ry of drug dis­cov­ery in­vest­ments. How could they rec­og­nize a valu­able in­vest­ment when they saw one?

I reached out to Kibar this morn­ing to see who was in this new syn­di­cate. Kibar replied with this:

Our ex­ist­ing in­vestors par­tic­i­pat­ed about ~15-20% of this round, the rest are new. And we went with pri­vate cap­i­tal again (fam­i­ly of­fices, high net worth in­di­vid­u­als, and sov­er­eign funds), no VC/PE (ex­cept Vick­ers).

Fin­ian Tan, chair­man at Vick­ers, at the time ex­plained that Sa­mumed was the first of many in­vest­ments in drug dis­cov­ery. Tan him­self is no rook­ie in health­care. He’s served as ex­ec­u­tive deputy chair­man of Sin­ga­pore’s Na­tion­al Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Board, as well as on the boards of The Na­tion­al Can­cer Cen­ter of Sin­ga­pore, ven­ture firm Life Sci­ences In­vest­ment, and SingHealth, the biggest health care group in Sin­ga­pore.

Though not a sci­en­tist him­self, he ap­par­ent­ly has a knack for eye­ing good in­vest­ments. Tan was an ear­ly in­vestor of Baidu, known as the “Google of Chi­na” and cur­rent­ly val­ued at $80 bil­lion. Tan said his ven­ture firm made the biggest en­try in­vest­ment it’s ever made with Sa­mumed due to the com­pa­ny’s unique­ly high re­ward vs. risk pro­file. The last time he made a sim­i­lar in­vest­ment was Baidu it­self, Tan said.

Sa­mumed’s drug dis­cov­ery plat­form could be “a break­through of huge pro­por­tions,” Tan said in an email. “The im­pact on hu­mankind would be an or­der of mag­ni­tude we have not seen since (Alexan­der) Flem­ing’s dis­cov­ery of an­tibi­otics (in the 1920s).”

Time will tell.

Kibar said Sa­mumed is tar­get­ing its first ap­proval with­in the next few years.

“This round takes us there (in­clud­ing all our pro­grams, clin­i­cal and pre­clin­i­cal pipeline), plus launch cost, plus some ex­tra cush­ion,” Kibar wrote in an email.

Im­age: Os­man Kibar.

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.

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.

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.