Immunai Launches With $20M Seed Funding And Plan To Map The Immune System

Immunai came out of stealth mode Thursday with two things: a mission to map the entire immune system and its functions using machine learning, and a capital infusion of $20 million in seed funding.

Two Israeli investment firms, Viola Group and TLV Partners, led the seed round for the New York City-based company that is building the largest proprietary data set in the world for clinical immunological data for better detection, diagnosis and treatment of disease. By leveraging single-cell technologies and machine-learning algorithms, Immunai has mapped out millions of immune cells and their functions, Immunai CEO Noam Solomon told Crunchbase News.

Over the last several years, cell therapies and cancer immunotherapies have become the latest innovation in treatment options. Immunotherapy uses the body’s immune system to target and destroy cancer cells.

Cancers, such as melanoma and lung cancer, have responded well to immunotherapy drugs, also known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the immune system is complex and it is not yet known how drugs affect immune cells. And for costly cell therapies, a slight variation in cell therapy products can have a significant influence on a patient’s response to the therapy, Solomon said.

“Drugs that improve immune response to cancer are transformational for some patients, but don’t work in 50 (percent) to 70 percent of other patients,” he said. “We are trying to understand what therapies work—when they work—by measuring the immune system at high resolutions. We can then use those insights to improve the design of combination therapies.”

Immunai leverages single-cell technologies to profile cells from a blood sample. Its proprietary database then uses machine-learning algorithms to map the hundreds of cell types and their states to create an immune profile. That profile is then used to support biomarker discovery and insights that identify how a cell responds to its changing environment.

Solomon and Immunai CTO Luis Voloch founded the company in January 2019, and were later joined by cancer immunology scientist Ansu Satpathy, and data scientist Danny Wells, a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

The company has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, Israel, and has already established clinical partnerships with 10 medical centers, as well as multiple commercial partnerships for cell therapy and checkpoint blockade with biopharma companies.

Immunai closed on the new round of funding three months ago and will use it to further the development of its technology and business functions while expanding its team of scientists, engineers and machine-learning experts, Solomon said.

“We have closed a substantial contract with a Fortune 100 company and will sign a few others in the next few weeks,” he said. “We are providing partnership models with hospitals, academia, biotech and biopharma partners with a goal of finding biomarkers for resistance and toxicity for drugs and to help partners accelerate the FDA approval of their drugs.”

Source. Crunchbase, May 14, 2020

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Stellar Health Raises $10M in Series A Funding

Stellar Health, a New York City-based value-based healthcare technology company, raised over $10m in Series A funding.

The round was led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from existing investors Primary Venture Partners.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development and engineering, and support operations including the expansion of services to new markets and to double the size of its team within the next year looking to hire across multiple departments, including Engineering, Product, Operations, and Business Development.

Founded in 2018 and led by Michael Meng, CEO, Stellar Health provides a cloud-based, point-of-care platform which tracks data and actions to help primary care providers achieve value-based care goals for their patients and rewards them with real-time incentives.

The company has developed a payor and provider network across 11 states in the U.S., and, by the end of 2020, expects to have 100,000 patient lives managed through their platform.

Source. FinSMEs, May 12, 2020

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Carbon Health's $26M add-on investment fuels cross-country telehealth expansion

Carbon Health, a primary care provider blending in-person and virtual care services, has announced a $26 million Series B1 raise from prior backer DCVC.

WHAT THEY DO

San Francisco-based Carbon Health runs a series of clinics in California. These brick-and-mortar locations are supported by a Carbon Health mobile app, through which patients can view their health records, schedule appointments, handle their payments or receive their care through a video telehealth visit.

This round adds on to a $30 million raise announced last June, which was preceded by $6.5 million back in 2017.

WHAT IT'S FOR

This virtual component of Carbon Health's offerings have become a particular focus for the company over the last few months. As part of the funding news, the company said that it increased its staff from 100 employees to more than 300, and has now expanded its virtual-care service to treat patients in 15 additional states – many of which are among the largest and hardest hit by COVID-19. These virtual visits cost patients $49.

“Expanding our testing efforts and virtual care footprint will help to reduce the pressure on local hospitals and clinics focused on COVID care, provide non-COVID patients the care they need without putting themselves at risk of exposure, and ensure communities across the country are healthy and well as we look towards reopening our economies," Eren Bali, CEO and cofounder of Carbon Health, said in a statement. “We are aware that millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their health insurance at a time when getting medical care is critically important. ... We are focused on getting our virtual care services up and running across the country so that seeing a doctor is easy and affordable for anyone who needs care.”

THE LARGER TREND

Like Carbon Health, several tech-enabled primary care providers have stepped up their virtual offerings in response to the epidemic. 98point6's text message-based service said last month that its $43 million raise would expand its offerings in response to spiking demand, while Heal's house call and telehealth app platform recently added a telepsychology service to its offerings.

Carbon Health's COVID-19 response also includes its in-person testing services. Although the company noted in today's announcement that it has administered more than 12,000 of these across its clinics, the provider is likely keeping a keen eye on home-testing and sample-collection developments after it was caught up in the regulatory confusion of mid-March.

ON THE RECORD

"In a matter of weeks, this amazing team has tripled in size and driven dozens of initiatives at the front lines of this pandemic, serving thousands of patients across California," Bali said. "I’m excited to begin expanding our reach nationwide at a time when our communities need healthcare resources more than ever.”

Source. Mobile Health News, Dave Muoio, May 11, 2020

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MEDcraze Raises $3M in Seed Financing

MEDcraze LLC, an Atlanta, GA-based online platform startup that provides patient information and access to new medical technologies, completed a £3m seed funding round.
This financing has been made exclusively by JG Griffeth Investments LLC.

The company will use the proceeds to make key hires and continue to build out additional platform features, expand advertising efforts and opportunities for medical device, biotech and pharmaceutical companies that have recently launched new products.

Led by Carey Markey, Founder and CEO, and Manny Trujillo MD, Plastic Surgeon and Co-Founder, MEDcraze is an online community which allows recently diagnosed patients with an upcoming surgical procedure to obtain access to applicable advancements in medical technology. They can then take this information and have an elevated discussion, based on technology, with their healthcare provider.

Source. FinSMEs, May 4, 2020

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Alume Biosciences Closes $5.5M Series A Financing Round

Alume Biosciences, Inc., a La Jolla, Calif.-based biotechnology company developing nerve-targeted pharmaceuticals for surgical and therapeutic use, completed a Series A funding in the amount of $5.5m

Backers included co-founder Chrysa Mineo (formerly of Receptos and Neurocrine Biosciences) and Dan Bradbury (co-founder and Executive Chairman of Equillium, Inc. and former CEO of Amylin).

Founded by Quyen Nguyen, MD, PhD, with co-founders Brett Berman, MD, FACC, Chrysa Mineo and scientific co-founder Mike Whitney, PhD, Alume is a biotechnology company that is developing nerve-targeted pharmaceutical agents for surgical and therapeutic use. The company’s first product, ALM-488, is a fluorescently labeled peptide-dye conjugate that makes human nerves “glow,” helping surgeons reduce injury to critical nerves during surgery.

Alume intends to develop agents including ALM-488 to be used as an adjunct during surgery to help surgeons see nerves better compared to current visualization with white light alone.

The company’s technology has the potential to improve the accuracy of nerve identification, decrease operative time, and lead to better outcomes for patients.

Intellectual property underpinning Alume was licensed from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Dr. Nguyen is a Professor in the Department of Surgery and Director of the Facial Nerve Clinic.

Source. FinSMEs, May 1, 2020

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RDMD Secures $14M in Series A Financing USA

RDMD, a San Francisco, CA-based healthcare technology company focused on accelerating drug research for patients with rare diseases, raised $14m in Series A financing.

The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing seed investors Lux Capital, Village Global and Garuda Ventures, and new investor Maveron Capital. In conjunction with the financing, Nabeel Hyatt, general partner at Spark Capital, joined the company’s board of directors.

The company intends to use the funds to: 

Expand into 20 additional rare diseases 

Launch corresponding research studies for each of the new conditions, which will help researchers better understand the natural progression of each disease and design better trials as a result 

Offer new and improved research experience and research insights to participants in each rare disease community 

Expand collaborative partnerships with patient organizations and academic consortiums ready to build a regulatory-grade evidence platform in their conditions 

Grow its commercial partnerships with new and existing biopharmaceutical customers 

Further expand its international platform capabilities

Expand its team, including key senior leadership hires

Ensure continuity of research programs throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond 

Led by Nancy Yu, co-founder and chief executive officer, RDMD has developed an FDA-ready technology platform that generates deep clinical evidence to accelerate rare disease research and drug development, as well as a patient application that empowers patients and families to participate in research from home.

The company also announced a partnership with UCB for up to five years to enable research in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disease. UCB will leverage RDMD’s platform of real world evidence to advance UCB’s drug discovery and development efforts in PSP.

In addition, RDMD is now partnering with patient advocacy organizations and physician consortiums across its 12 conditions, including the Children’s Tumor Foundation, Cure GM1 Foundation, Cure IBM, Cure Sanfilippo Foundation, International Foundation for CDKL5 Research, Myositis Support and Understanding Association, National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association, NF2 Biosolutions and the PSP & CBD Foundation.

Since the launch, the company’s patient application has grown to more than 1,000 users in 12 conditions, including neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2), idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP), Myasthenia gravis (MG), GM1 gangliosidosis (GM1), inclusion body myositis (IBM), Sanfilippo syndrome (MPS III), thymidine kinase type 2 deficiency (TK2d), Hunter syndrome (MPS II), Wilson disease and CDKL5 deficiency.

Source, FinSMEs, April 16, 2020

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Monarch Biosciences Closes Over $1M Seed Financing

Monarch Biosciences, Inc., a Los Angeles, CA-based advanced life sciences company, closed its seed round financing of more than $1m.

The round was led by by Checkmate Capital Group. In conjunction with the funding, Checkmate Capital’s CEO, Tom Paschall, will join the MonarchBio Board of Directors.

The company intends to use the funds for the development of its biomaterial-based neurovascular stent and platform for local delivery of cell therapies.

Led by CEO Leon Ekchian, Ph.D., MonarchBio is an advanced life sciences company that is developing a pipeline of products based on its proprietary thin-film nitinol (TFN) biomaterial. Its lead product – the Titan Flow Diverter™ – offers rapid occlusion of cerebral aneurysms compared with current leading neurovascular products in the market. The second product in its pipeline, the Engineered Lymph Node™ (ELN), is a TFN-based device for local delivery of cell therapies treating solid tumors.

The seed funding, which supplemented several million dollars of NIH funding, has been pivotal for the development of MonarchBio’s Titan Flow Diverter. In preparation for first-in-human trials expected later this year, MonarchBio completed preclinical animal and human simulator testing conducted by a team headed by David Kallmes, M.D., Professor of Radiology, at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota.

MonarchBio has thirteen issued U.S. patents in addition to having exclusively licensed a portfolio of patents from UCLA and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center related to various applications of TFN technology.

Source, FinSMEs, April 8, 2020

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Olive Raises $51M in Funding

Olive, a Columbus, Ohio-based company creating an AI workforce for healthcare, closed its $51m funding round.

The round was led by General Catalyst with participation from existing investors include Drive Capital, Oak HC/FT, Ascension Ventures and others. In conjunction with the funding, Ron Paulus, former president and CEO of Mission Health, a $2 billion integrated health system, will join Olive’s Board of Directors.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its growth.

Led by Sean Lane, CEO, Olive provides an AI workforce that automates healthcare’s most repetitive, high-volume administrative processes, across departments such as Revenue Cycle, Information Technology, Supply Chain, Clinical Administration, Human Resources and more, to deliver improved efficiency, reduced costs, and increased employee capacity. In 2019, the company’s presence grew to over 500 U.S. hospitals across 41 states, including 25 of the nation’s largest health systems.

Source, FinSMEs, April 1, 2020

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Keona Health Receives Investment from Riverside

Keona Health Inc., a Chapel Hill, NC-based contact center and patient access platform provider, closed a funding round with Riverside Acceleration Capital (RAC).

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

The funding will go towards advancing automation and maintaining its client service.

Led by Oakkar Oakkar, CEO, Keona Health provides a software platform optimizes the front line of communication for patients and their providers. Its flag ship product, Health Desk, is a Contact Center and Patient Access Platform utilized by millions across the US and Canada. Purpose built to provide flexibility with differing workflows, the platform unifies data from multiple sources allowing health providers to deliver personalized service and support through a single timeline view.

Source: FinSMEs, March 25, 2020

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Apexigen Closes $123M Series C Financing Round USA

Apexigen, Inc., a San Carlos, Calif.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing a new generation of antibody therapeutics for oncology, completed a $65m equity financing.

The round was led by Decheng Capital and new investor Oceanpine Capital and included participation from other new and existing investors. This financing is an extension of the Series C financing of $58m, which was previously announced in August 2018, bringing the total amount raised in the Series C to $123m. The completion of the Series C financing brings the total equity raised to date by the company to $158m.

Apexigen intends to use these proceeds to support the ongoing clinical development of its lead immunotherapeutic, APX005M, a monoclonal antibody targeting CD40. Currently, APX005M is in multiple Phase 2 clinical trials to treat different types of solid tumors. The funds will also be used to develop the company’s pipeline of therapies, including the advancement of at least one new proprietary immunotherapeutic product candidate into Phase 1 clinical development.

Led by Xiaodong Yang, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Apexigen is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing a new generation of antibody therapeutics for oncology. APX005M and other programs were discovered using its proprietary APXiMAB™ discovery platform, which has enabled the company and its collaboration partners to discover and develop high-quality therapeutic antibodies against a variety of molecular targets, including targets that are difficult to drug with conventional antibody technologies. Seven product or product candidates discovered using APXiMAB are currently commercially available or in clinical development, either internally by Apexigen or by its licensees.

Source. FinSMEs, March 23, 2020

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Sight Sciences Raises $30M in Series E Funding

Sight Sciences, Inc., a Menlo Park, CA-based growth-stage medical device company focused on ophthalmology and optometry, glaucoma and dry eye disease, closed an over $30m Series E Preferred Stock financing round.

The round was led by D1 Capital Partners.

The company intends to use the funds for continued clinical and operational development and to support commercial expansion for its OMNI® and TearCare® products.

Founded in 2011 by Paul Badawi, CEO, Sight Sciences has developed, and is now commercial with products that target the underlying causes of the world’s most prevalent eye diseases. The company’s surgical glaucoma product portfolio features the OMNI® Surgical System, a dually-indicated device that facilitates the performance of both trabeculotomy and transluminal viscoelastic delivery. Using proprietary multi-modal functionality, OMNI allows surgeons to target of all three sources of resistance in the conventional outflow pathway (trabecular meshwork, Schlemm’s canal, and collector channels) with a single device and single corneal incision.

The company’s non-surgical Dry Eye product portfolio consists of TearCare® for ophthalmologists and optometrists. TearCare is a software-controlled, wearable eyelid technology that delivers highly targeted and adjustable heat to the meibomian glands of the eyelids. Leveraging the full functionality of the blinking eye, proprietary SmartLid™ technology is designed to facilitate natural meibum expression when meibum is in its softened phase.

Source. FinSMEs, March 18, 2020. 

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Volastra Therapeutics Raises $12M in Seed Financing

Volastra Therapeutics, a NYC-based biotechnology company developing novel therapies for the treatment of metastatic cancers, raised $12m in funding.

The round was led by Polaris Partners with participation from DROIA Oncology Ventures, the Global Health Sciences (GHS) Fund (Quark Venture LP and GF Securities), and ARCH Venture Partners.

The company intends to use the funds to develop therapies for metastatic cancers by targeting key pathways related to chromosomal instability, a hallmark of cancer metastasis.

Founded by Drs. Lewis Cantley, Samuel Bakhoum, and Olivier Elemento, Volastra is a biotechnology company focused on developing novel therapies for patients with metastatic cancers by exploiting unique insights into chromosomal instability. The company also will utilize an extensive library of organoids derived from metastatic cancer samples to elucidate how tumors spread and devise therapeutic strategies that target chromosomal instability during the process of cancer metastasis. The platform enables Volastra to perform rigorous target validation, to advance first-in-class clinical candidates, and to identify biomarkers to stratify patients for clinical trials.

Volastra Therapeutics’ operations are located at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS at New York City (JLABS @ NYC).

Following the deal, Executive Chair Sandra Peterson, a Partner at Clayton, Dubilier, and Rice, a Board Member of Microsoft, and the former Group Worldwide Chairman of Johnson & Johnson, will lead the Volastra Board of Directors. Polaris Managing Partner Amy Schulman will serve alongside Ms. Peterson on the company’s Board of Directors with DROIA Partner Luc Dochez and GHS Fund CSO and Partner Zafi Avnur. Dr. Bakhoum will represent the scientific founders on the company’s Board.

Source. FinSMEs, February 11, 2020.

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Iora Health Completes $126M Series F Funding Round

Iora Health, a Boston, MA-based primary care provider network, raised $126M in Series F funding round.

India-based Premji Invest, the billion dollar investment group of Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji, led the funding round and was joined by existing investors Cox Enterprises, Temasek F-Prime Capital, Devonshire Investors, .406 Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Polaris Partners, and Khosla Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and refine and optimize their care model.

Led by Rushika Fernandopulle, MD, MPP, CEO and co-founder, Iora Health leverages a model to provide patients with care, which includes office and non-office based encounters (e.g. phone, text messages, and email), a transparent medical record and educational offerings. The company has 48 practices across the U.S. serving thousands of Medicare beneficiaries.

Source. FinSMEs, February 10, 2020

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BenchSci Raises $22M in Series B Funding

BenchSci, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of a machine learning platform to identify and resolve preclinical research inefficiencies in drug discovery, raised $22m in Series B financing.

The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Northleaf Capital Partners and existing investors Gradient Ventures, Inovia Capital, Golden Ventures, and Real Ventures. As part of the deal, Shervin Ghaemmaghami, Senior Vice President of F-Prime, will join the board of directors.

The company will use the funds to further develop its suite of products.

Led by Liran Belenzon, CEO and co-founder, BenchSci leverages machine learning to target inefficiencies and unnecessary spend in preclinical research by evaluating published experiments to identify which reagents will work for which experiments. The company’s first product, AI-Assisted Antibody Selection, focused only on antibodies. Now, BenchSci has launched its new AI-Assisted Reagent Selection product, which expands to other important reagents, including recombinant proteins, RNAi, CRISPR, cell lines, and more.

Since commercializing its AI-Assisted Antibody Selection product 18 months ago, the company has helped decrease costs and accelerate research in 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and more than 3,600 academic labs.

The company has also expanded its contract with Novartis. As one of the earliest pharmaceutical companies to benefit from AI-Assisted Antibody Selection, Novartis will also be the first BenchSci customer to deploy the new AI-Assisted Reagent Selection product.

Source. FinSMEs, February 4, 2020

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Nagi Bioscience Raises CHF 1.8M in Seed Funding

Nagi Bioscience SA, a Lausanne, Switzerland–based life-science-tech company developing technology for the in vitro testing of drugs and chemicals, closed a CHF1.8m seed financing round.

Backers included investiere, Zürcher Kantonalbank, NEST pension fund and private investors from Switzerland and United States.

The company intends to use the funds to complete the development of its first product and prepare its market access.

Founded in January 2019 by Dr. Matteo Cornaglia, CEO, and and Dr. Laurent Mouchiroud, CSO, as a spin-off from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Nagi Bioscience has developed “Organism-on-Chip” technology, which leverages the combined use of microfluidics and microscopic worms (the validated biological model C. elegans) to provide a new sustainable alternative to traditional animal testing to pharma, chemical, cosmetic industries and biomedical research. This solution complies with the emerging directives for the replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing, i.e. the so-called “3Rs” principles, and allows reducing costs and delays of pharmaceutical and chemical research.

Nagi Bioscience has already prototypes under validation in collaboration with key industrial players in the chemical and biotech fields.

Furthermore, the company announced the assignment of Dr. Chris Radloff to the Board of Directors. He is a board director and angel investor in several startups and brings to the company 20+ years of expertise in the life-science-tech field.

Source. FinSMEs, December 23, 2019

                                                                 ***

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PierianDx raises $27M in Series B to ‘democratize’ next-generation sequencing

A startup that aims to provide a software-as-a-service platform to allow genomic sequencing as a standard of care has raised its latest round of financing.

St. Louis-based PierianDx said Monday that it had closed a $27 million Series B funding round, led by ATW Partners and SJW Ventures, along with existing investors Health Catalyst Capital, Inova health Systems, RTI International and ARUP Laboratories. 

The company closed its Series A round, for $9.3 million, in January 2016.

“PierianDx has grown tremendously over the past 18 months and is continuing to add the clinical expertise and resources necessary to execute on our vision,” PierianDx Executive Chairman Rakesh Nagarajan said in a statement. “Our team is uniquely skilled and dedicated to the adoption of clinical [next-generation sequencing] around the globe.”

The company’s stated goal is “democratization” of NGS, with a focus on making targeted therapies for cancers more accessible to healthcare systems, labs and patients. The company’s software system is called Clinical Genomicist Workspace and is described as providing clinical labs more streamlined and accurate analysis, interpretation and reporting for accelerating personalized medicine programs.

NGS involves genetically sequencing cancers and find proteins that can be targeted with certain drugs in order to increase the chances of efficacy. For some drugs, doing so is crucial, such as those that target biomarkers independent of what tissue a tumor affects, such as Merck & Co.’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) for microsatellite instability-high and mismatch repair-deficient cancers and the two approved NTRK inhibitors, Bayer’s Vitrakvi (larotrectinib) and Roche’s Rozlytrek (entrectinib).

Nevertheless, implementing NGS can come with some challenges as well. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Molecular Case Studies, researchers at Legacy Health in Portland, Oregon, wrote that NGS has proven to have tremendous power to detect and characterize a broad spectrum of mutations across many gene targets. However, “This power of NGS also results     in significant challenges related to technical expertise, bioinformatics, computing infrastructure, laboratory practices, and integration into clinical decision-making.”

Source. Medcity News , Alaric Dearment  October 28, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

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ArsenalBio emerges from stealth with $85 million and a dream team to fight cancer

The story behind ArsenalBio begins with Sean Parker’s Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Founded in 2016, the Institute has been instrumental in providing a space for the top researchers into cancer across different fields to collaborate and communicate on the latest breakthroughs in settings that range from formal meetings to informal retreats.

It was at one of these informal retreats that luminaries like Dr. Bradley Bernstein, a professor of pathology and researcher at the Broad Institute; W. Nicholas Haining, vice president of discovery oncology at Merck Research Laboratories; Dr. Alexander Mason, an associate professor of immunology at the University of California San Francisco; and E. John Wherry, a professor of systems immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, began to talk about the current state of the art in cancer diagnostics and therapies and the technologies powering cell-based therapies to potentially cure cancer.

Parker suggested that rather than have each of these researchers spin their technologies out into separate companies that would develop one discrete innovation that would be needed to get to a cell-based therapy for solid tumors, the researchers should combine forces and build an arsenal of tools for the discovery and development of potential cures.

“I look at this as a tour de force of a combination of bringing academics together who typically would start separate companies and get them working together with a dream team management team,” says Beth Seidenberg, the founder of Westlake Village BioPartners and an investor in ArsenalBio. 

Indeed, the management team is just as impressive as the researchers behind the project. Kleiner Perkins founding partner Brooke Byers recruited Dr. Ken Drazan to serve as a consultant to the company as it was getting off the ground. Drazan, now the company’s chief executive, was the former president of the cancer research and diagnostics startup Grail and has served as an executive and founder at a number of healthcare startups and large medical companies.

With Drazan on board, the company quickly recruited the rest of the management team: Jane Grogan, the former principal scientist in charge of adaptive tumor and cell therapy at Genentech; Michael Kalos, the former vice president of immuno-oncology and cell therapies at Janssen Oncology; and Tarjei Mikkelsen, the former vice president of biology at 10x Genomics.

ArsenalBio initially formed as a shell company with seed financing from investors in 2018, basically on the back of its technical team and nascent executive staff.

Alongside the powerhouse executive team and scientific founders, ArsenalBio has now raked in $85 million in financing from investors including Westlake Village, the PICI, Kleiner Perkins, the University of California San Francisco Foundation Investment Company, Euclidean Capital and Osage University Partners.

The idea is to improve the ability of T cell therapies to fight a broader range of cancers more effectively. T cell treatments have already shown amazing promise with certain types of cancer, but have not been able to effectively treat the solid tumors that represent the deadliest manifestation of the disease.

To tackle solid tumors like sarcomas, carcinomas and lymphomas, doctors need to figure out how to deliver the T cells first to the area around the tumor and then to the right tissues where the tumor is spreading. That requires a set of biological instructions, which, in many cases have yet to be discovered.

“We need to get the cells to deal with the tumor microenvironment,” says Seidenberg.

T cells are the human body’s natural response to fighting off infections and disease. Cancers essentially turn off that natural immune response by signaling to the cells that a tumor is actually something they should ignore rather than attack.

“Our goal is to program [cells] by delivering additional  instructions to tell the T cell to ignore the instructions from the tumor… to ignore the signals,” says Drazan. 

The company is still developing its first product strategies now, Drazan says. But ArsenalBio will be selling two different types of technologies. The first will be the medicines themselves that will be used to cure certain types of cancer. The second will be the sequences of genes that can be used to counteract or override the signals that are coming from different types of tumors which prohibit T cells from performing their normal functions.

Drazan compared those sequences to programs on GitHub that other researchers, clinicians and companies could use to develop their own therapies.

“ArsenalBio allows us to rewrite vast stretches of code to give T cells dramatic new functions — that means they can be made to be more effective at killing cancer and a broad spectrum of other diseases,” said Sean Parker, founder and chairman of PICI and ArsenalBio director, in a statement. “It’s also very rewarding to see ArsenalBio born from the deep collaboration of PICI investigators — who worked together across research centers, hospitals and universities on the science behind these technologies. The company’s very existence demonstrates how much faster and better we can get therapies from bench to bedside when we collaborate and put patients first.”

Source. TechCrunch, Johnathan Schreiber, October 17, 2019

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Parsley Health nabs $26 million Series B to launch telemedicine products

Parsley Health, the NY-based service that focuses on the source of a medical issue rather than the symptoms, has today announced the close of a $26 million Series B round of funding led by White Star Capital, with participation from FirstMark Capital, Amplo, Alpha Edison, Arkitekt Ventures, Trail Mix Ventures, and Galaxy Digital. Flatiron Health founder Nat Turner and One Medical founder Tom Lee also participated in the round.

Parsley was founded in 2016 by Dr. Robin Berzin, who saw that the average American spends around 19 minutes/year with a physician. These visits are usually focused on symptoms, and resolving them, rather than understanding the core reasons why someone is struggling. After all, the CDC says that 70% of diseases in our country are chronic and lifestyle-driven.

Parsley Health offers a membership service that allows users to work with doctors to find the root of their issues and create lifestyle changes to resolve them.

The sign-up process includes a long survey that helps capture all kinds of information about the patient, from family health history to past procedures and lifestyle. The patient then schedules their first visit with a physician, which is meant to last 75 minutes to get the full scope of that patient’s health. 

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Sponsor 

myCareBase™ is a platform for seniors and their families to find, evaluate, hire and manage home support services, to improve the seniors’ ability to remain living safely in their current home for as long as possible. The caregiver marketplace currently offers candidates in Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver.

To compliment this platform the company also offers an innovative care management app that centralizes communication and task management among family members and the caregiver, along with a Care Concierge service to help family members with administrative, navigational or organizational tasks. 

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From there, users can see into their medical data and doctor’s notes through a web portal. They’re also given a health plan, which includes nutritional advice and access to their own health coach, and may be referred to a specialist, if needed.

One year of membership includes five annual visits with doctors (approximately four hours of doctor-patient time), along with five sessions with their health coach, who help patients stay on their plan with advice on how to get more sleep, eat better or get more physical exercise.

On the heels of the new funding, Parsley Health is launching a new telemedicine product, which is meant to give people across the country the same access to Parsley’s service as those who visit their brick-and-mortar locations. This includes diagnostic testing, personalized medical care from doctors who practice functional medicine, health coaching and 365-days-a-year access to their care team.

The first diagnostics product is called Comprehensive Hormone Care and is meant to help women dealing with PCOS, PMG, fatigue, weight gain, insomnia and anxiety to learn the root issue and create a care plan. This product will offer the option to get a one-time analysis with a health plan or to join as a full Parsley Health member and get coaching, re-testing and progress tracking.

To start, the telemedicine products will only be available in New York and California, but the company has plans to expand this product to all 50 states in the next six months.

Source.TechCrunch, Jordan Crook, October 10, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

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