The battle to find new antibiotics to replace those that are becoming increasingly ineffective against bacteria has been boosted by the launch of a $165m venture fund set up by Novo Holdings to address the early-stage funding gap.
Novo $165m Superbug Fund is Fillip For Antibiotic Start-Ups
REPAIR will invest $20–40m per year over three–five years in 20 projects to combat antimicrobial resistance, with the hope that at least one of them will get to market.
More from Financing
• By
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.
• By
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.
• By
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.
• By
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.
More from Business
• By
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.
• By
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.
• By
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.