The latest longevity updates from our investment news desk.
MultiOmic lands $6.2M seed round
London based AI-powered drug discovery company MultiOmic Health closed a $6.2 million seed funding extension round to build its precision therapeutics discovery platform for metabolic syndrome-related medical conditions.
The round was led by London-based Hoxton Ventures, with participation from Ada Ventures, MMC Ventures and Verve Ventures. This brings the total raised by the company to $8.6 million, including an earlier round led by San Francisco-based Fifty Years.
“Existing treatments for metabolic syndrome-related conditions merely reduce risk or delay onset of serious consequences such as heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, foot amputation, liver failure and premature death,” said Robert Thong, CEO of MultiOmic. “Our human-centric platform originates therapeutics from high fidelity patient data, reversing the traditional drug discovery models that initiate treatments from test tube and animal experiments. We are going from bedside to lab bench, rather than from lab bench to bedside!”
Life Bio partners with Forge Biologics
Cellular rejuvenation company Life Biosciences announced a manufacturing partnership with Forge Biologics to help advance Life Bio’s partial epigenetic reprogramming platform to address aging-related diseases, including its lead program targeting ophthalmic indications.
Forge will provide adeno-associated virus (AAV) process development, toxicology, cGMP manufacturing, and analytical services to Life Bio. The company will use Forge’s platform processes including its proprietary HEK293 suspension Ignition Cells and pEMBR adenovirus helper plasmid. All development and AAV manufacturing activities will occur at the Hearth, Forge’s 200,000 square foot gene therapy facility in Columbus, Ohio.
“Life Bio is an emerging leader in the development of novel therapies for aging-related diseases, and we are thrilled to serve as their cGMP manufacturing partner to help advance the manufacturing of AAV for their innovative cellular rejuvenation technology, which has the potential to benefit millions of aging patients worldwide,” said Timothy J Miller, CEO of Forge.
Renibus reports positive Phase 2 results
Cardio-renal disease biopharma Renibus Therapeutics presented positive final results from its Phase 2 trial in patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. The company’s RBT-1 compound was studied in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and/or cardiac valve surgery on cardiopulmonary bypass.
RBT-1 treated patients demonstrated a highly significant increase in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant biomarkers of cytoprotective preconditioning, which was the primary endpoint of the study. The biomarkers assessed were interleukin-10 (IL-10), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) and Ferritin.
“We are thrilled with the final results of RBT-1 in this Phase 2 study, demonstrating clinically meaningful reductions across key clinical endpoints that we believe will significantly improve the patient’s journey in cardiac surgery,” said Frank Stonebanks, co-CEO of Renibus. “These data demonstrate that RBT-1 has broad potential as a preconditioning agent across several large cardiothoracic surgery settings. We look forward to initiating our pivotal Phase 3 study later this quarter and progressing one step closer to our goal of bringing RBT-1 to patients.”
Recursion to acquire two drug discovery startups
Clinical stage TechBio company Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX) announced it has signed agreements to acquire two Canadian companies in the AI-enabled drug discovery space: Cyclica and Valence.
Cyclica, headquartered in Toronto, has built two highly differentiated products in the digital chemistry space which will be integrated into RecursionOS. Valence, headquartered in Montréal, has pioneered the application of low-data learning in drug design, unlocking the ability to design differentiated small molecules with improved properties and function from datasets too small, sparse, or noisy for traditional deep learning methods.
“The strategic acquisitions of Cyclica and Valence add industry-leading capabilities in digital chemistry, as well as machine-learning and artificial intelligence, which combined with our large-scale automated wet-laboratories and supercomputing capabilities, enables us to deploy what I believe is the most complete, technology-enabled drug discovery solution in the biopharma industry,” said Chris Gibson, CEO of Recursion. “Amidst a rapidly accelerating global race for technology talent, these acquisitions cement Recursion as the center of gravity for the best and brightest in ML and AI who want to reimagine how drugs are discovered.”
Nightingale Health appoints commercial chief
Preventive health company Nightingale Health appointed Maximilian LeRoux as Chief Commercial Officer. LeRoux will have a key role in growing B2B sales in accordance with the company’s ambitious targets. He brings more than 20 years’ international business experience, and he has held a number of commercial leadership positions in sales and marketing, including at Dell Technologies, Savox Communications and others.
LeRoux joins Nightingale Health from Mimi Hearing Technologies, a Berlin based scale-up company and the global leader in sound personalization and hearing wellbeing. Before that he was the co-founder and CEO of AINA PTT a company providing critical communications solutions, building the company ground-up to a globally recognized brand within its industry.
“LeRoux has experience of working in challenging positions at scale-up companies and larger corporations, as well as building a company from scratch to a successful business, which we highly value,” said Teemu Suna, CEO of Nightingale Health. “He speaks five languages fluently and has lived and worked in numerous countries, and we believe he has excellent capabilities to grow Nightingale Health’s global business.”
