Tag: Biopharma

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What’s next for GLP-1 weight loss drugs?

GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound have been on the market for a few years now. The medications are wildly popular, so it’s no surprise that other pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Amgen are trying to grab a piece of the market with similar drugs of their own.

In this week’s STATus Report, we’ll see how several pharma companies are trying to compete with Novo and Lilly’s already safe and effective products. We’ll also learn what Novo and Lilly are cooking up in order to stay dominant in the weight loss marketplace. And I drop in for a visit with my STAT colleagues from “The Readout LOUD” podcast for their thoughts on this head-spinning GLP-1 news cycle.

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Bacterial Expression Tech Prompts NorthX and enGenes Collaboration

Bacterial expression systems are becoming more versatile, say Swedish contractor NorthX Biologics and Austrian technology firm enGenes Biotech, who have teamed up to create an integrated, E.coli-based protein production platform.

E.coli-based protein expression systems are not a new idea. They have been around since the 1970s and used to make everything from recombinant human insulin to treatments for growth hormone deficiency.

They are generally cheaper than expression systems that use mammalian cells, primarily due to lower reagent costs. They also tend to be faster to set up, easier to scale, and have a reduced risk of viral contamination.

Typically, E.coli-based systems are selected for the manufacture of simple proteins that do not require human-like post-translational modifications such as glycosylation. However, recent advances in strain engineering are starting to expand their scope.

As a result, more biopharmaceutical firms are considering them for commercial-scale protein production, says Ola Tuvesson, CTO at NorthX, who cites this demand as a driver for the enGenes partnership.

“The biggest growth vectors are biosimilar manufacturing, peptide therapeutics, and antibody fragments, including ADC components. Advances in glycosylation engineering are also expanding what the platform can address at the higher end of biologics complexity.

“Several trends are reinforcing this direction: sustained pricing pressure pushing biopharma away from higher-cost production systems for this segment of the pipeline, growing investment in CRISPR-based strain engineering that extends microbial platforms into more complex program types, and a manufacturing infrastructure that needs to keep pace with industry demand,” Tuvesson tells GEN.

Integrated pathway

NorthX Biologics and enGenes’ strategy is to offer an integrated service that covers everything from strain design through manufacture.

Tuvesson says, “The E. coli development to GMP manufacturing pathway typically covers expression system development, process development, scale-up, and transfer into GMP production. While the technical steps are well established, the challenge in many programs is that these stages are often handled by different providers, leading to delays, rework, and increased scale-up risk.

“The pathway we are establishing addresses this fragmentation by integrating expression development and GMP manufacturing into a single, aligned workflow. This reduces handovers, improves data continuity, and helps ensure that the expression system is optimized from the start for manufacturing at scale,” he adds.

The new pathway will combine high-throughput screening platforms, multi‑fermenter systems, and multivariate experimental design with advanced analytical support and scale-up engineering.

According to NorthX Biologics and enGenes Biotech, the idea is to enable rapid iteration and the generation of decision-grade data early in development, supporting more robust and scalable processes.

There is an option to extend the partnership, according to Tuvesson, who says, “The collaboration may also open up opportunities to implement more continuous manufacturing approaches over time.”

The firms plan to monetize the platform by providing it to biopharma customers as a manufacturing service, rather than out-licensing, as Tuvesson explains.

“Expression systems and processes developed for a specific protein can be transferred under standard commercial terms. However, the pathway itself is not a standalone licensable product.

“The focus is instead on integrating expression development and manufacturing into a single workflow, reducing handovers and enabling faster development timelines,” he says.

The post Bacterial Expression Tech Prompts NorthX and enGenes Collaboration appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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STAT+: Pharmalittle: We’re reading about Medicare and obesity drugs, Germany’s pricing plans, and more

Rise and shine, everyone, another busy day is on the way. And it is getting off to a pleasant start here on the Pharmalot campus, where clear blue skies and comfy breezes are greeting us. Moreover, the official mascots succeed in spotting various varmints — foxes and possums, to be specific, but thankfully, no vultures. As for us, we are heating our spiffy new replacement kettle for another cuppa stimulation. Our choice today is old-fashioned green teas. And here is a helpful tip — a teaspoon of honey enhances the flavors splendidly. Of course, you are invited to join us. For the full experience, we are now hawking replicas — take a look. Meanwhile, here are a few items of interest. As always, do keep in touch. We appreciate feedback, criticism, and tips. …

Weight loss drugs will be available to adults 65 and older in Medicare for the first time next month, thanks to a government program that is supposed to be temporary — but it may be difficult to end, STAT explains. By law, Medicare is prohibited from paying for obesity drugs, but the Trump administration is circumventing the law by making the drugs available in a demonstration program. Initially, Medicare hoped to push private Medicare insurers to voluntarily cover the drugs in a three-year program called Balance, which would have started following a short transitional period. But insurers balked, so the government is instead extending the transitional coverage program, called Bridge, until the end of next year.

Novo Nordisk chief executive officer  Mike ​Doustdar said the company plans to seek Chinese regulatory approval ‌for its Wegovy weight loss pill “very soon” as it moves to catch up with Eli Lilly in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market, Reuters tells us. The patent for semaglutide, the active ​ingredient in Novo’s blockbusters Wegovy and Ozempic, expired in China in March, though the company ​has regulatory data protection until early next year. Doustdar said he expected competition from generic drugmakers from the second quarter of next year. Novo won early approval in the U.S. and the U.K. for its Wegovy pill and launched ​it in the U.S. ​this year. Lilly ⁠followed quickly, securing U.S. approval in April for its oral drug orforglipron.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Therapy-Resistant Residual Cancer Cell Dependencies Mapped

Cancer drugs can shrink fast-growing tumors. But sometimes a few tumor cells survive. These “persister” cells seed new tumors, forcing cancer patients into arduous cycles of testing and treatment. The problem is that persister cells are rare—as few as one in a thousand tumor cells—and they’re genetically identical to the tumor, which makes them hard to find. Plus, their tenacity can be temporary, and by the time a scientist can get them in a petri dish, the qualities that helped them survive may have faded.

To figure out how to beat them, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), built a robotic system that treats thousands of mini tumors at once in the laboratory. Their resulting ResMap platform lets scientists systematically identify, track, and treat surviving cells. The platform revealed shared features among persister cells that could help explain why cancer comes back—features that could be exploited by future drug therapies to beat them. “A few years ago, people were still asking whether persister cells were real,” said Xiaoxiao “Vany” Sun, PhD, an assistant researcher in the UCSF Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. “Now we can find them and test ideas for how to eliminate them.”

Sun is first author of the team’s published paper in Science Advances, titled “ResMap: A community resource for systematic mapping of therapy-persistent residual cancer cell dependencies across contexts,” stating, “ResMap establishes a foundation for coordinated community efforts to accelerate rational persister-directed combination strategies toward the clinic.”

Residual disease following targeted therapy remains a key challenge to achieving lasting responses in oncogene-driven cancers, the authors stated. Drug-tolerant persister cells, which the team describes as “subpopulations that survive initial therapy without stable genetic resistance,” can contribute to residual disease and seed tumor relapse. “Targeting drug-tolerant persister cells has emerged as an essential complement to oncogene-directed therapy, yet the field has lacked a unified framework to evaluate and prioritize candidate targets,” they wrote. “Understanding and targeting these cells have emerged as a promising strategy for achieving lasting therapeutic outcomes.”

Cancer cell persistence was first described in 2010, the authors explained, and studies have linked persister survival to different biological processes and resulted in “an expanding list” of candidate therapeutic targets. However, they noted, “… despite over a decade of research, no persister-directed therapy has reached clinical approval.”

For their reported study, the team gathered 94 drug candidates that other laboratories had flagged as potential persister therapies. They wanted to test each drug at different doses, on persisters from two types of lung cancer that had been treated with standard therapies. “As a testbed, we selected four lung cancer models: two with EGFR inhibitor osimertinib (EGFRi)–treated EGFRmut cell lines (PC9 and MGH134) and two with KRAS inhibitor sotorasib (KRASi)–treated KRASG12C cell lines (LU65 and MGH1138-1),” they wrote in summary. Each model was screened under normal oxygen and hypoxic conditions.

It would require 10,000 painstaking, week-long experiments—so they built a robotic platform to eliminate the labor and inconsistency of doing it by hand.

Thousands of miniature tumors sat in stacks of 384-well plates inside controlled incubators. A robotic arm, like those used in pharmaceutical drug screening, moved the plates between experimental stations. One station used sound waves to deposit tiny, precise doses of drug onto each tumor (first, a lung cancer therapy; then, an experimental persister therapy). Other stations stained the tumors with antibodies and took microscopic images of each tumor or group of persisters.

The overall ResMap platform incorporated multiple components, the team explained. “… we developed the ResMap platform incorporating four integrated components: an automated high-throughput workflow, machine learning-based normalization, a persistence-specific metric, and a validated framework.”

Their results showed that of the tested drugs, nine consistently weakened persister cells. The findings suggest that persister cells may share common vulnerabilities, even if they had emerged under different treatment conditions. “Initial screening identified 12 targets with conserved anti-persister activity across genotypes and oxygen environments; follow-up validation reproduced nine of these targets and revealed variable degrees of persister specificity relative to general cytotoxicity.” The investigators suggested that, “Collectively, these findings suggest that although persister biology involves multiple adaptive programs, targeting individual, well-chosen survival pathways may be sufficient to meaningfully reduce residual disease burden.”

Steve Altschuler, PhD, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF and co-senior author of the paper, said, “We expected each tumor to behave as its own special case. Instead, we found patterns that held up across many different samples, suggesting there may be underlying rules that can help predict which therapies are most likely to work.”

The team plans to expand the platform to include more tumor types and treatment conditions. They hope the resulting dataset will be a resource to help researchers eliminate persister cells before they can give rise to drug-resistant disease. “ResMap provides a community resource for coordinated validation efforts and rational combination design aimed at minimizing residual disease following anticancer therapy,” they stated.

The post Therapy-Resistant Residual Cancer Cell Dependencies Mapped appeared first on GEN – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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ZoBio Introduces DNA-Encoded Library Service for Exploratory Drug Discovery Programs

Officials at Leiden, Netherlands-based CRO ZoBio say the company has launched a DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) discovery service, which is designed to help biotech and pharmaceutical companies generate validated, progressible hits against novel and challenging drug targets.

The new offering combines structure-grade protein production, quantitative biophysics, DEL screening, off-DNA hit validation and X-ray crystallography into a single workflow, according to a company spokesperson, who explains that it enables clients to move beyond hit identification toward high-confidence starting points for drug discovery programs.

ZoBio maintains that unlike transactional DEL screening approaches that focus solely on hit generation, its platform is designed to deliver biologically relevant, structurally characterized hit matter with clear potential for progression. The service is particularly suited to exploratory and difficult-to-drug targets, including protein–protein interactions (PPIs) and targets with poorly defined binding pockets, where conventional screening approaches often fail, notes Gregg Siegal, CEO of ZoBio.

“Drug discovery teams today are increasingly focused on highly validated but technically challenging targets, where traditional screening approaches can struggle to deliver meaningful starting points,” he continues. “Our approach combines DEL technology with the structural biology, biophysics, and assay expertise needed to generate hits that clients can confidently progress.”

Siegal also points out that the DEL service is library-agnostic, enabling clients to access commercially available DEL collections or apply ZoBio’s workflow to proprietary client-owned libraries. The integrated platform reportedly includes:

  • Structure-grade protein production and characterization
  • Quantitative biophysical assay development using techniques such as SPR
  • Biophysically informed DEL selection design
  • Interactive DEL data analysis and hit prioritization
  • Off-DNA hit resynthesis and orthogonal validation
  • Structural characterization through X-ray crystallography
  • Mechanistic insight to support downstream optimization

The workflow is designed to support collaborative decision-making throughout the discovery process, helping clients rapidly establish whether difficult or exploratory targets are viable for further development, according to Siegal, who says that members of the ZoBio team will be available for meetings during the BIO International Convention in San Diego to discuss the new service.

 

 

 

 

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STAT+: FDA approves Colorado’s plan to import cheaper drugs from Canada

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it will allow Colorado to import certain prescription drugs from Canada in an effort to bring prices down for residents, making it the second U.S. state to be granted such authorization. 

For more than a quarter of a century, Americans have sought drugs from Canada for relief from the ever-rising costs of medicines, sometimes taking widely publicized bus trips across the border. It wasn’t until 2020, though, that the first Trump administration officially endorsed the practice, when it published a regulation allowing states and Indian tribes to propose import plans. The Biden administration affirmed this rule with an executive order in 2021. And Florida became the first state to earn FDA approval in 2024. 

But state importation programs have proved extremely difficult to carry out, even with bipartisan support. Florida has yet to actually import any drugs from Canada, in part due to pushback from the Canadian pharmaceutical industry and fears the program will affect Canada’s drug supply. In May, the FDA extended its approval by six months to give the state more time to get its program up and running. 

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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The Download: cutting AC emissions, and nature’s drug designer

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

These new solid-state ACs promise a cool future. Scientists aren’t so sure.

After three years of record-­breaking heat and another scorcher underway, air-conditioning isn’t going anywhere. That’s good for our health, but bad for the planet: it already accounts for 7% of global electricity use and 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions. 

Feeling the heat, scientists and startups are hoping to amp up solid-­state cooling. These systems move heat through conductive materials, which could cool spaces and surfaces with fewer messy side effects. The catch is whether it can match the efficiency of traditional AC.

Find out how the unconventional coolers aim to dial down AC emissions.

—Sara Kiley Watson


This story is from the next edition of our magazine, which is all about engineering. Subscribe now to get a copy when it lands! 

Job titles of the future: nature’s drug designer

In 2018, after nearly two decades working in Big Pharma, chemist Tim Cernak was ready to put his skills to a new use. 

As a lifelong nature lover, he had become concerned that animals are often treated with human pharmaceuticals that can be harmful or even lethal. He decided to address this with a new approach: “conservation chemistry.” 

Using AI tools and robots, he’s now rapidly designing and testing drugs for animals. Here’s what it takes to treat nature’s patients.

—Anna Gibbs

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Anthropic has shut down access to its top models after a US directive
The US barred foreigners from using Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Friday. (NYT $)
+ Anthropic disabled access globally as it can’t filter users in real time.(BBC)
+ Talks with Amazon’s CEO apparently prompted the ban. (WSJ $)
+ Cybersecurity experts have called for the ban to end. (Axios)
+ But the White House’s war against Anthropic has previously backfired. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The UK is banning social media for under-16s
Details are scant, but the measure is due to take effect in early 2027. (The Guardian)
+ The ban covers Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. (BBC)
+ Many countries are curbing children’s social media access. (Reuters $)

3 New space data suggests black holes formed before galaxies
It could resolve cosmology’s chicken-and-egg dilemma. (New Scientist $)
+ Odd tricks have formed a massive black hole. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Skepticism around AI layoffs is increasing
There are growing doubts that AI is really the culprit. (TechCrunch)
+ We need a reality check on AI jobs hysteria. (MIT Technology Review)

5 A coalition of states has opened an investigation into OpenAI
Over matters including user data, child safety and advertising. (NYT $)

6 Tesla has been accused of misleading regulators over “full self-driving”
By exaggerating its safety statistics. (Reuters $)

7 NASA’s “quiet supersonic” plane has hit critical new milestones
The X-59 reached 924 mph and 55,000 feet. (Scientific American) 
+ Which are essential for flying over populated areas. (Engadget)
+ It’s designed to take the boom out of supersonic travel. (BBC)

8 Deepfakes are getting harder to spot—and weirder—in the midterms
Thanks to improvements in free AI tools. (WSJ $)

9 AI is revealing the secret lives of animals
By tracing their movements, landmarks, and social practices. (Nature) 

10 Where did Earth get its oceans? Maybe it made them itself.
Scientists now suspect that Earth’s waters are homegrown. (Quanta) 

Quote of the day

“This action has taken the best models away from defenders, created market uncertainty, and risked America’s AI leadership without any real risk to justify it.” 

—Cybersecurity leaders urge the Trump administration to reverse restrictions on Anthropic’s most advanced AI models in an open letter.

One More Thing

CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK


How scientists want to make you young again

A little over 15 years ago, scientists at Kyoto University made a remarkable discovery. When they added just four proteins to a skin cell and waited about two weeks, some of the cells underwent an unexpected and astounding transformation: they became young again.

Now, after more than a decade of developing this cellular reprogramming, biotech companies and research labs have tantalising hints that the process could be the gateway to an unprecedented new technology for human age reversal. 

Read the full story on their efforts to “reprogram” aging bodies back to youth.
 

—Antonio Regalado

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)

+ Evolutionary biologists may have figured out why the T-Rex had such tiny arms.
+ This beautifully sustainable bento box design is engineered to eliminate single-use takeout waste.
+ Search across 5.8 million museum artworks spanning from 3000 BC to today at The Last Museum.
+ Here’s a sharp cosmic snapshot of Thor’s Helmet, an interstellar gas bubble sitting 15,000 light-years away.

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StockWatch: Parabilis Medicines Makes Wall Street History with $770.5M IPO

In what’s shaping up to be a historic year for biotech initial public offerings, Parabilis Medicines (Nasdaq: PBLS) made its mark on Wall Street this past week by pricing the largest-ever IPO by a drug developer. This upsized offering raised an eye-popping $770.5 million in gross proceeds.

No sooner did Parabilis begin trading public shares on Wednesday, a day after offering 33.5 million shares of its common stock at $20 per share, than its stock price leaped 58% from the IPO price, closing its first full trading day at $31.60. Those shares slid 4% on profit taking Thursday, closing at $30.31, then fell another 10% Friday to finish the week at $27.26.

A day earlier, Parabilis announced the closing of its IPO, including a full exercise by underwriters of their 30-day option to buy an additional 5.025 million shares at the IPO price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. That added another $100.5 million to the initial $670 million in gross proceeds, which translates to another $93.5 million in net proceeds. When added to the $618.2 million net that Parabilis garnered from the original IPO, the company’s haul from the offering rises to a no-less-eye-popping $711.7 million, according to Parabilis’ IPO final prospectus.

Parabilis priced its IPO above its initial price range of $17–19 a share. The company initially planned to offer 25 million shares, then raised that offer to 33.3 million before adding 200,000 more shares to finalize its offering.

Parabilis’ IPO surpasses the $625 million IPO carried out in April by Kailera Therapeutics (Nasdaq: KLRA), which topped the previous record-high among U.S. biotechs, the $604 million offering of Moderna (Nasdaq: MRNA) in December 2018, two years before the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine developer won FDA emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine.

Based in Cambridge, MA, Parabilis is a developer of drugs and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) targeting historically undruggable protein targets and based on stabilized helical peptides or Helicons™.  Parabilis says it has generated proprietary datasets, comprising millions of data points for hundreds of thousands of Helicons across dozens of drug-like properties, following a decade of Helicon drug discovery.

“Unlike Kailera, which formed in 2024 and quickly stockpiled private capital before going public, Parabilis took a longer and far less linear road,” commented Ben Zercher, senior biotech & pharma analyst with PitchBook.

Parabilis was founded in 2015 as FogPharma to commercialize technology developed in and in-licensed from the lab of Harvard University researcher and serial entrepreneur Gregory Verdine, PhD, who served as the company’s co-founder and CEO from 2015–2023.

Six venture rounds

While the company closed six venture rounds, Zercher noted, its valuation had fluctuated in the face of the post-pandemic period that saw private biotechs struggle, as well as leadership turnover and the rebrand through which FogPharma became Parabilis in 2024.

The rebranded company built momentum last year, according to Zercher, on the strength of its lead candidate zolucatetide (formerly FOG-001), a stabilized peptide built using the company’s Helicon platform. Zolucatetide is the first and only direct inhibitor of the elusive β-catenin:TCF interaction, according to the company.

Parabilis stated in its final prospectus that it plans to spend approximately $150 million in IPO proceeds toward continuing ongoing clinical development of zolucatetide in desmoid tumors, including continuation of dose expansion and the launch of a Phase III registrational trial to topline data.

Approximately $120 million is set to be spent on continuing the ongoing clinical development of zolucatetide across several additional indications, including dose escalation and expansion in familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP); hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer; and other rare tumors, with the aim of collecting data to support a registrational trial.

Parabilis plans to use the largest share of its IPO proceeds, approximately $190 million, toward advancing its pipeline of additional programs—including its ETS-related gene (ERG) protein degrader, an allosteric androgen receptor in its active state (ARON), and beta-catenin degraders—to Phase I clinical data.

“Our current pipeline is focused on various cancers and tumor types; however, we believe Helicons could also have broad applicability against targets in many diseases with substantial unmet need outside oncology, and we plan to evaluate other therapeutic areas in the future,” Parabilis stated in the final prospectus.

The remainder of the proceeds would be used, Parabilis said, toward continued evolution of the Helicon platform for discovering and developing drug candidates, as well as toward general corporate purposes that include additional development efforts, working capital, and operating expenses.

Zolucatetide received the FDA’s Fast Track designation last year, followed in March by the agency’s Orphan Drug designation. In January, Parabilis closed on a $305.2 million Series F crossover financing round by selling 49,518,175 shares at $6.1644 per share to various investors, garnering $304.5 million in net proceeds. Parabilis finished the first quarter with $329.039 million in cash and cash equivalents as of March 31.

Fifteenth biopharma IPO so far in 2026

Parabilis is the 15th and latest biotech or pharmaceutical company to carry out an IPO this year, raising a combined $12.11 billion in proceeds, according to PitchBook data. Biotech and pharma accounted for 15 IPOs in all of 2025, raising a combined $10.49 billion—an improvement in dollars over 2024’s $8.83 billion, which was raised in 33 IPOs.

Seven of this year’s IPO companies have seen their shares rise since their initial offerings, led by the 466% share price increase of Veradermics (NYSE: MANE), a developer of treatments for dermatology and aesthetic conditions that closed Friday at $96.24 a share.

“With the biotech window reopened, the volume of IPOs reflects a backlog of quality companies that kept building through the biotech funding downturn rather than a wave of hype,” Zercher added. “Where the pandemic-era class sold preclinical optionality, Parabilis and the 2026 cohort are being priced on de-risked clinical programs with clear regulatory paths.”

In addition to its IPO, Parabilis said, it has also closed on selling 4,166,666 shares at $18 per share—90% of the IPO price per share—through a concurrent private placement to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals that has raised approximately $75 million in proceeds.

Parabilis’ initial IPO filing, dated May 19, came just a day after Parabilis inked an up-to-$2.3 billion-plus strategic research collaboration with Regeneron to discover and develop an initial five candidates encompassing “antibody-Helicon conjugates,” a new form of ADCs aimed at challenging and historically undruggable targets by combining the cell permeability of small molecules with the binding capabilities of larger biologics, in order to reach targets long considered undruggable.

Financial runway into H2 2029

Regeneron agreed to pay Parabilis $50 million upfront toward launching the collaboration. That upfront payment, plus proceeds from the IPO and the company’s existing cash and cash equivalents, “will be sufficient to fund our operations into the second half of 2029,” Parabilis stated in its IPO final prospectus.

According to that final prospectus, Parabilis ended the first quarter with a $45.316 million net loss, up 18% from its $38.326 million net loss of Q1 2025, as well as a net loss of $145.889 million for last year, up nearly 24% from its $117.914 million net loss for 2024. The company has no reported revenue.

Parabilis’ accumulated deficit rose 8% during Q1, to $586.82 million from $541.504 million at the end of 2025.

To fund its operations, Parabilis reported, it has raised a total of $876.8 million as of March 31. That total consisted of $811.8 million from sales of its convertible preferred stock, $15 million in borrowings under a term loan, and a $50 million Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE).

Leerink Partners, BofA Securities, Evercore ISI, and Guggenheim Securities are acting as active book-running managers for Parabilis’ IPO, while LifeSci Capital is acting as a passive book-running manager.

Leaders and laggards

  • Propanc Biopharma (Nasdaq: PPCB) shares soared 80% from $1.35 to $2.43 Thursday after the Australian developer of therapies for pancreatic, ovarian, and colorectal cancers said it approved a share repurchase program authorizing the company to repurchase up to $5 million of its common stock. “The management team believes we are entering a transformative stage for the company,” CEO James Nathanielsz stated, citing recent progress by Propanc’s lead asset PRP, a first-in-class therapy designed to treat and prevent metastatic cancer from solid tumors, toward entering the clinic with a pivotal Phase Ib, first-in-human study in 30–40 advanced cancer patients. He also cited the company’s efforts to publish key scientific data, file patentable discoveries, and form partnerships with contract research organizations (CROs), contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), and suppliers: “The foundation is clearly there, and as a result, we believe we are undervalued significantly.”
  • Tango Therapeutics (Nasdaq: TNGX) shares rocketed 53% from $20.22 to $30.93 June 8 after the developer of precision oncology treatments based on synthetic lethality announced positive initial data from its ongoing Phase I/II trial (NCT06922591) assessing its next-generation, MTA-cooperative PRMT5 inhibitor candidate vopimetostat (TNG456) in combination with Revolution Medicines’ (Nasdaq: RVMD) RAS(ON) inhibitors daraxonrasib (RMC-6236) and zoldonrasib (RMC-9805) in patients with MTAP-deleted and RAS-mutant metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Tango reported that 92% of patients with PDAC in the trial’s vopimetostat plus daraxonrasib arm achieved an objective response, while patients with second and third line PDAC treated with the combination showed a six-month progression-free survival (PFS) rate of 90% (median PFS not yet reached), suggesting durability of clinical benefit. Tango said it plans to finalize the design of a Phase III randomized-controlled trial of the combination approach in front-line pancreatic cancer and disclose vopimetostat lung cancer monotherapy data in the second half of 2026.

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SonoThera Raises $125M to Develop Ultrasound-Mediated Genetic Medicines

Biotechnology company SonoThera has raised $125 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round. The financing was led by Vida Ventures, with participation from ARK Invest, CureDuchenne Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, SymBiosis, UCB Ventures SA, Vivo Capital, and existing investors ARCH Venture Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments, Duquesne Family Office, Illumina Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Medical Excellence Capital, RA Capital, and Vertex Ventures HC.

SonoThera will use the funds to advance its lead programs in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) in the clinic. The funds will also support efforts to expand its pipeline of targeted redosable genetic medicines across multiple organ systems and scale its proprietary platform technologies for safe, targeted therapy delivery.

The company’s platform combines a proprietary ultrasound-mediated delivery technology dubbed RIPPLE™, with a payload engineering platform dubbed PORE™. The platforms are designed to support the development of DNA and RNA therapeutics, gene editing, and gene silencing approaches. SonoThera is using its tech to develop genetic medicines that it claims will address key limitations of conventional gene therapies including delivery challenges, payload size constraints, immune responses, safety events, and difficulties with redosing. 

As Kenneth Greenberd, PhD, SonoThera’s co-founder and CEO, stated “we founded SonoThera to take a fundamentally different approach, with a platform designed to broaden the therapeutic possibilities of the field. We believe our technology has the potential to expand the range of diseases addressable by genetic medicines while enabling more precise, durable, safer, and repeatable therapies for patients.”

SonoThera has already demonstrated the targeted delivery and expression capabilities of its platform across multiple tissues, including skeletal muscle, heart, liver, kidney, adipose, and brain. It has also shown that it can deliver large payloads such as full-length dystrophin for DMD and RNA-based payloads for gene silencing applications in preclinical studies. 

The company expects to initiate its first clinical trial in DMD in 2027.

Commenting on the financing, Rajul Jain, MD, managing director at Vida Ventures, said “we believe SonoThera, with its RIPPLE delivery and PORE payload engineering technologies, has the potential to unlock opportunities in diseases with significant unmet need that have been previously inaccessible to other genetic medicine approaches.” 

In connection with the financing, Jain and Rakhshita Dhar, MS, vice president & head of Healthcare Venture Investments at Leaps by Bayer, have joined SonoThera’s Board of Directors.

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An Investigator-Initiated, Randomized, Double-Blind, Double-Dummy Study to Evaluate the Adjunctive Effect of CreNeuroS™ CNS Fish Oil Plus Softgels in Patients With Major Depressive Disorder Receiving Escitalopram.

Conditions: Adjunct in the Treatment of Depressive Disorder

Interventions: Combination Product: Escitalopram (as escitalopram oxalate) tablet +CreNeuroSTM CNS Fish Oil Plus Softgels; Combination Product: Escitalopram (as escitalopram oxalate) tablet +Placebo softgels

Sponsors: Sichuan Credit Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.; Vivotech Research Lab Pvt Ltd

Not yet recruiting