Finance Watch: Dementia Discovery Fund Exceeds Fundraising Goal By $150m

Private Company Edition: The Dementia Discovery Fund started in 2015 with plans to raise $200m to fund early-stage development of disease-modifying drugs, but recently closed its fundraising with $350m in commitments. Also, Kaleido's $101m Series C is among three recent $100m-plus rounds.

Finance Watch

The Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) brought together government, nonprofit, venture capital and industry investors starting in 2015 with the goal of funding early-stage development of disease-modifying therapies for all forms of dementia. With fundraising complete at £250m ($350m), the DDF may be able to fund even more dementia-focused start-ups than originally planned.

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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.

Japan T-Reg Venture RegCell Raises New Funds, Relocates To US

 
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Kyoto-based venture moves HQ to California to expand R&D and business outreach for its regulatory T-cell technology, as it raises around $46m in public and private funding.

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Stock Watch: How Tariff Threat Might Boost Pharma Q1

 
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Supply chain disruption fears at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic caused drug over-ordering. Imminent tariffs on drugs may have had a similar effect on pharma sales in Q1 earnings season.

Peter Marks’ Departure From FDA Rattles Biopharma Industry

 
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Stock prices plummeted, particularly for vaccine makers and cell and gene therapy developers, after the US FDA’s top biologics overseer resigned over vaccine misinformation concerns.

Vertex Ends One Type 1 Diabetes Cell Therapy, Shifts Focus To Another

 
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Seeking cell therapy approaches to cure type 1 diabetes, Vertex abandons a candidate encapsulated to avoid immune system detection but hopes to file another candidate for approval in 2026.