the company is “in the process of nailing down [lab] space” in New York city, one of the major challenges for local startups. (For more on that issue, and some potentially creative solutions for it, check out this guest post from Versant Ventures’ Carlo Rizzuto.)
—Cambridge-based Scholar Rock raised a $36 million Series B round and added some so-called “crossover investors” including Fidelity Management and Research and Cormorant Asset Management to its group of backers. I spoke with CEO Nagesh Mahanthappa about the raise and Scholar Rock’s clinical plan. The company has identified a lead drug, SRK-015, that is meant to enhance muscle growth.
—Massachusetts is already home to some 250 digital health companies, but the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership—a nonprofit public policy group—has put an initiative together to boost those ranks. Jeff Engel has the early details on the MACP’s plan, which is still in its infancy.
—Dutch firm UniQure (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QURE]]) provided a look at the first human data from two patients dosed with its gene therapy for hemophilia, AMT-060. The results were positive, and lifted UniQure shares. But these data are early, and UniQure has a number of competitors chasing it—among them Cambridge-based Dimension Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DMTX]]), which just began a study for its own hemophilia gene therapy.
—Cambridge-based Exosome Diagnostics raised a $60 million Series B round from investors including Qiagen, CD Ventures, Monashee Capital, Forbion Capital Partners, and Tiger Management. David Holley has more on Exosome’s financing, which is one of the first significant moves made by new CEO John Boyce.
—Publicly traded biotechs, meanwhile, were pummeled by Wall Street in a down market. A number of Boston-area companies, like Epizyme (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EPZM]]), Sage Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SAGE]]), Acceleron Pharma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:XLRN]]), Akebia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AKBA]]), raised money via stock offerings, and all of them saw their shares slide. Here’s more from the Wall Street Journal.
—Cambridge-based Akashi Therapeutics, the patient organization-funded startup formerly known as Dart Therapeutics, formed a partnership with Grunenthal Group to advance a Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy drug called HT-100. Grunenthal will commit more than $100 million to the deal.
—A year after acquiring Waltham, MA-based drug discovery startup X-Chem, Pharmaceutical Product Development spun the company out into an independent entity. X-Chem also cut a research deal with Sanofi, though financial terms weren’t disclosed. Xconomy profiled X-Chem back in 2013.
—Annapurna Therapeutics, the France-based gene therapy company formerly known as AAVLife, licensed a group of gene therapy programs from Ronald Crystal’s lab at Weill Cornell. FierceBiotech has more on the deal here. For more on Annapurna, and its CEO Amber Salzman, check out this piece.
Photo of New Year’s Eve in Times Square courtesy of flickr user Anthony Quintano via Creative Commons.
