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Finance Watch: Rakuten Aspyrian Raises $150m VC Round For Laser-Activated Cancer Drugs

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Private investors, including Japanese e-commerce mogul Hiroshi Mikitani, backed a $150m Series C round for Rakuten Aspyrian and its photoimmunotherapy platform. Also, pharma-backed therapeutic video game developer Akili boosts Series C to $68m, and Summit garners additional BARDA funding.

Finance Watch

Rakuten Aspyrian Inc. has raised $150m in Series C venture capital to fund a Phase III clinical trial that it intends to start before the end of this year to test its laser-activated antibody conjugate in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, and to initiate two to three additional studies for ASP-1929.

The San Diego-based firm has raised $238m to date with the enthusiastic backing of billionaire businessman Hiroshi Mikitani, who founded...

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More from Financing

Finance Watch: Scorpion Spinout Antares Launches With $177m For Precision Medicines

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Private Company Edition: Antares’ lead asset will enter the clinic in 2026 after Lilly committed up to $2.5bn for Scorpion’s Phase I/II PI3Kα inhibitor STX-478. Also, Amplify raised $200m for its first biotech VC fund and Mosanna raised an $80m series A round, among other financings.

Finance Watch: Insmed Cashes In On Positive Data With $750m Offering

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Public Company Edition: Insmed raised $750m after reporting positive Phase IIb data in PAH, Cogent accessed up to $400m in new debt, Kelun-Biotech netted $250m in a placement of shares and ADC revealed a $100m private placement. In strategic updates, Recursion cut 20% of its jobs.

Spain’s SpliceBio Secures Sanofi and Roche Support In $135m Financing

 
• By Kevin Grogan

Series B cash will be used to advance its Stargardt disease gene therapy.

Chinese Biotech VC/PE Fundings Rise But Still Modest

 
• By Dexter Jie Yan

LTZ Therapeutics and Beijing Sungen Biomedical are among the Chinese biotechs raising new funding, of around $40m each, based on their clinical assets with novel mechanisms of action. While fundings have risen, they remain moderate however.

More from Business

Finance Watch: Insmed Cashes In On Positive Data With $750m Offering

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Public Company Edition: Insmed raised $750m after reporting positive Phase IIb data in PAH, Cogent accessed up to $400m in new debt, Kelun-Biotech netted $250m in a placement of shares and ADC revealed a $100m private placement. In strategic updates, Recursion cut 20% of its jobs.

Lilly Looks For Muscle-Sparing Candidates In Pact With Juvena

 
• By Joseph Haas

Deal Snapshot: Including its internal efforts with bimagrumab, Lilly has been seeking a muscle-sparing therapy to complement GLP-1 obesity drugs, such as Zepbound.

Asia Deal Watch: Otsuka’s Taiho Licenses LSD1 Inhibitor Rights To Benz

 
• By Joseph Haas, Lisa Takagi, Jung Won Shin, Vibha Ravi, and Sushmita Panda

Plus deals involving BioAge/JiKang, Sanyou/Medicovestor, AriBio/Acino, Intragrand/Transpire, Kaken/Twocells, Sumitomo/Novo Nordisk, NIBEC/Undisclosed, Formosa/Adalvo, Drug Farm/Amoytop, Lupin/SteinCares and Lupin/Honeywell.