Ascendis Pharma A/S has two approved products and plans to submit a third drug candidate for approval later this year from its endocrinology rare disease portfolio. It also has two clinical-stage cancer drug development programs, but the public company is spinning out its preclinical wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) asset into a new private company called Eyconis Inc. The spinout will have $150m in initial funding from venture capital and institutional investors.
Finance Watch: Ascendis Spins Out Ophthalmology Firm Eyconis With $150m
New Company Will Use TransCon For Eye Diseases
Private Company Edition: Publicly held Ascendis outsourced its preclinical AMD program to private Eyconis. Also, Innovation Endeavors revealed a new $630m VC fund and Mirae raised $50m for its first life science fund, while Accent, Comanche and Tr1X each brought in $75m rounds.
More from Financing
• 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.
• By
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.
More from Business
• By
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.
• By
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.
• By
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.