Venture Capital Deals At A Glance
Company	Financing
Bonum Therapeutics; Seattle	The start-up, which was spun out when Roche acquired Good Therapeutics, Inc. for $250m up front in August, announced a $93m series A round on 15 November to fund its use of allosteric regulation to create conditionally active and less toxic medicines; Roche Venture Fund participated in the series A round. (Also see "Roche Buys IL-2 Technology From Good, Which Forms New Firm Bonum" - Scrip, 7 September, 2022.) Bonum will use its technology platform to develop regulated cytokines, including interleukin-12 (IL-12), IFN-alpha and TGF-beta for immuno-oncology applications and seek collaborators to apply its platform to other disease areas.
Rezo Therapeutics Inc.; San Francisco	Rezo launched on 17 November with $78m in series A financing to build out its capabilities for discovering and developing precision therapeutics with an initial focus on cancer drugs. The company’s Sequence to Systems Drugs (SSD) platform – based on technology from the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) – integrates proteomics, genetics, structural biology, chemical biology and computational methods to create comprehensive maps of molecular disease networks. The maps allow for identification of novel drug targets that can be addressed by a range of treatment modalities. QBI director Nevan Krogan and UCSF chemistry professor Kevan Shokat are among the company’s co-founders; Krogan is Rezo’s CEO. Vir Biotechnology, Inc. CEO and former Biogen, Inc. CEO George Scangos is a co-founder and chairman of Rezo’s board of directors; former Gilead Sciences, Inc. R&D head and current Kronos Bio, Inc. CEO Norbert Bischofberger also is a co-founder and board member.
Casma Therapeutics Inc.; Cambridge, MA	The company raised its third and smallest round of venture capital financing to date, announcing on 15 November that it closed a $46m series C financing. Casma previously raised a $58.5m series A round in 2018 and a $50m series B in 2020. (Also see "Finance Watch: $320m In New VC Deals Includes $110m Round For Neogene" - Scrip, 15 September, 2020.) The firm is developing cellular degradation approaches based on the autophagy pathway, which may be able to reverse disease progression in a range of disease areas, including oncology, inflammation, neurodegeneration and metabolic disorders. Casma will use its new cash to fund preclinical and investigational new drug (IND) application-enabling studied for its lead program in the treatment of MYD68-mutant lymphoma.
Curevo Vaccine; Seattle	Following a $60m series A round in February, Curevo announced on 16 November that it closed a $26m series A1 financing. (Also see "Finance Watch: A Dozen Deals Add Up To $672m In Biopharma Venture Capital" - Scrip, 12 February, 2022.) The company will have top-line data in early 2023 from its ongoing 678-patient Phase IIb clinical trial testing lead vaccine candidate CRV-101 against GSK plc’s shingles vaccine Shingrix. CRV-101 is designed to produce an optimal immune response with a smaller amount of adjuvant, to improve tolerability.
Lipidio Pharmaceuticals; San Diego	Lipidio said on 10 November that it closed a series A extension bringing the round’s total to more than $20m to fund development of novel therapeutics for dermatological and metabolic diseases. An assortment of individual and institutional investors have backed Lipidio to date, including former Tanox, Inc. founder and CEO Nancy Chang, former Alnylam Pharmaceuticals CEO John Maraganore and former Allergan plc chairman and CEO Brent Saunders in the series A extension. The company said it will have data from three clinical trials of lead dermatology drug candidate GDD3898 before the end of 2022 and launch a series B round in 2023. Potential indications include acne and sebaceous hyperplasia.
NRG Therapeutics Ltd; Stevenage, UK	NRG revealed on 9 November that it closed a £16m series A round to fund its development of disease-modifying therapeutics that target mitochondrial disfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. The company plans to use its new funding to advance multiple brain-penetrant small molecules through IND-enabling studies. Its preclinical pipeline includes small molecules that inhibit the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) through novel mechanisms of action, which may prevent or delay progression in Parkinson’s disease or address neuroinflammation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
FundaMental Pharma GmbH; Heidelberg, Germany	The preclinical neuroscience firm, which was spun out of Heidelberg University, launched on 17 November with €10m ($10.4m) in seed financing to develop first-in-class small molecules for neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS and Huntington’s disease. FundaMental’s approach separates the normal neuroprotective effect of synaptic glutamate from its neurotoxic extra-synaptic actions, which are eliminated by the company’s inhibitors.

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