Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #24

More money, more problems to solve

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Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #24 - September 5, 2020 - September 11, 2020

Financings

Number of deals: 15 & Total capital invested: $990.3M

- Agragene raised $4M led by Ospraie Ag to develop new biopesticides.

- Casma Therapeutics raised $50M leb by The Column Group to develop new medicines targeting autophagy.

- Generate Biomedicinesraised more than $50M led by Flagship Pioneering to use machine learning to develop new biologics - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/flagship-pioneering-debuts-new-startup-using-ai-to-design-disease-fighting-proteins

- Inversago Pharma raised $35M led by Forbion to develop new medicines for metabolic disorders.

- Korro Bio raised $91.5M led by Wu Capital to develop new drugs focused on RNA editing. 

- Manifold Bio raised $5.4M led by Playground Global to build a platform for in vivo screening of biologics.

- MiNA Therapeuticsraised $30M to move their pipeline of small activating RNAs for liver cancers and metabolic disorders - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/mina-raises-30m-to-take-small-activating-rna-into-phase-2

- OncoImmune raised $56M from HM Capital, 3E Bioventures Capital and Kaitai Capital to move forward their clinical drugs in leukemia and COVID-19 - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/oncoimmune-nabs-56m-round-for-late-stage-covid-tests-leukemia-treatment

- Orasis Pharmaceuticals raised $30M with Bluestem Capital and Visionary Ventures co-leading the round to develop new medicines focused on ophthalmology. 

- Proov raised a seed round from Lightship Capital and Texas HALO Fund to build an at-home kit for hormone testing.

- Recursion Pharmaceuticals raised $239M led by Leaps by Bayer to scale their machine learning platform for drug develop and further develop their clinical pipeline - https://www.wsj.com/articles/recursion-raises-239-million-series-d-round-strikes-deal-with-bayer-11599649266

- Sana Benefits raised $20.8M led by Gigafund to build health insurance products for small businesses.

- Silk and Sonder raised $3.6M led by Redpoint to build a community and subscription service for mental health.

- Truepill raised $75M led by Oak HC/FT to scale their API platform for pharma manufacturers and health plans. Incredible company.

- Zymergen raised $300M led by Baillie Gifford to scale their synthetic biology platform for organism design.

Exits

Number of exits: 5 & Total exit value: Over $5B

- American Well filed for a $525M IPO to scale their telehealth platform (Google invested $100M beforehand) - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1393584/000119312520241132/d943395ds1a.htm

- C4 Therapeutics filed for a $100M to develop their preclinical pipeline of selective degraders in oncology - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1662579/000119312520243234/d772024ds1.htm

- Codiak BioSciences filed to raise a $100M IPO to develop their pipeline of exosome therapeutics - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1659352/000119312520242253/d27892ds1.htm

- Dyne Therapeutics filed to raise a $175M IPO to develop new medicines for muscular diseases - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1818794/000119312520230038/d920854ds1.htm

- Prelude Therapeutics filed for a $100M IPO to develop their pipeline of cancer medicines targeting resistance. With two phage 1 programs for solid tumors and myeloid cancers, Prelude is targeting PRMT5, an enzyme related to treatment resistance and oncogenesis in both solid and hematological cancers. While several epigenetic-focused companies usually focus on lysine and its effect on gene regulation, Prelude is focusing on the methylation of arginine specifically, the enzyme PRMT5 and its effects on the cell cycle, RNA splicing and signaling - https://sec.report/Document/0001193125-20-240138/

Deals

Number of deals: 2 & Total deal value: ~$2B

- AbbVie closed a $2B deal with I-Mab Biopharma to gain access to the latter’s anti-CD47 monoclonal antibody lemzoparlimab for treating multiple cancers outside of China. The agreement also allows for a potential partnership on future CD47-related therapeutic agents, such as lemzoparlimab-based bispecific antibodies. Abbvie has the right of first negotiation to in-license further development and commercialization of two additional lemzoparlimab-based bispecific antibodies discovered and currently at the chemistry, manufacturing and controls and preclinical development stages at I-Mab - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/abbvie-puts-1-74b-table-for-i-mab-cancer-collab-as-biotech-nabs-418m-raise

- Recursion Pharmaceuticals announced a partnership with Bayer in conjunction with their latest financing round. Bayer will collaborate with Recursion to discover and develop treatments for fibrotic disease of the lung, kidney, heart and more. The two companies may initiate more than 10 fibrosis programs that could culminate in more than $100 million in development and commercial milestone payments plus royalties on future sales - https://www.wsj.com/articles/recursion-raises-239-million-series-d-round-strikes-deal-with-bayer-11599649266

I used to play football a long time ago - I had some decent success mainly because of my teammates with some of them playing in the NFL. Every practice, every game was an existential fight. I’m not that athletic so every year some 6’4 monster would show up trying to take my spot. Similarly, all of these companies are fighting for their right to exist whether they raised $1M or $100M. Building a great business requires passion and focus. A really powerful and useful framework to lead groups of people and win was developed by Bill Walsh -