Finance Watch: Another Mega-Round As Moderna Bucks Biopharma's IPO Trend

Moderna raised $500m to fund its growing pipeline, choosing once again to stay private rather than pursue an IPO. Also, AvroBio closed a $60m Series B round to advance its gene therapies for lysosomal storage disorders, Seattle Genetics led recent public company financings, and Vical is restructuring.

Finance Watch

Moderna Therapeutics LLC continues to confound biopharmaceutical industry observers by staying private, yet raising extremely large amounts of money from investors who want whatever it is that the messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics developer is selling, including a new $500m equity round.

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Finance Watch: As Stocks Tumble, Offerings Slow, Financial Alternatives Rise

 
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Public Company Edition: Stock valuations are falling due to political, economic and regulatory uncertainty, resulting in fewer large public offerings, more alternative financings and cost cuts. Carisma, Tenaya, BioAtla, Arbutus, Nkarta, Alector and Adaptimmune announced layoffs.

AIRNA To Take RNA Editing Into The Clinic With $155m Series B Round

 
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CEO Kris Elverum told Scrip about the start-up’s platform for editing RNA to correct genetic variants that cause harm and to reproduce healthy variants as a means of treating disease.

Isomorphic Adds To Growing AI War Chest With First External Funding Round

 

The four-year-old firm said it plans to advance programs toward the clinic from the funding round, which comes just over a year after signing two major pharma partnerships.

Finance Watch: European And Japanese Biotechs See VC Investor Interest In March

 
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Private Company Edition: The latest group of drug developers to announce venture capital financings is remarkable for its geographic diversity, from Character Biosciences’ $93m series B round in the US to Augustine’s $85m series B in Belgium to a $29.2m series C for Aculys in Japan.

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Amgen’s Rare Disease Portfolio Grows With Second Approved Uplizna Indication

 
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The US FDA approved anti-CD19 antibody Uplizna, from Amgen’s $27.8bn purchase of Horizon in 2023, for IgG4-related disease – a larger market than its original NMOSD indication.

BeiGene Ends Anti-TIGIT Development In Lung Cancer

 
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BeiGene’s Phase III ociperlimab joins the list of failed TIGIT inhibitors, as candidates from Roche, Merck & Co. and others have failed late-stage studies.

Orphans Cling On To Growth Advantage As Market Share Heads Towards 20%

 

It might be the beginning of the end for the orphan drugs party but there is still sales growth enjoyment to be had for the sector, whose star performers are now looking increasingly like mainstream drugs.