Starting September with New Kids On The Block (if you know, you know) as Laverock Therapeutics emerges from stealth mode. Laverock has an exclusive license from Tropic Bioscience to utilise their gene silencing platform. Indeed, this is an attempt to bring to humans what has yielded excellent results in plants, as Tropic is according to last published information, the majority stakeholder in the company. Our not-for-long Prime Minister is not the only one saying Hasta la vista, baby: Two UK-based companies have been acquired by US-based ones. The Guardian has interviewed four founders about their recent fundraising experiences and things are not looking great. The grass tends to be greener in Prof Mauro Giacca’s lab, as Syncona-backed Forcefield Therapeutics publishes pivotal research on Chrdl1, Fam3c and Fam3b. Meanwhile, Cambridge-based healthcare private equity Sana Capital has appointed Dr David Brown to its Advisory Board, who co-founded Healx and Crescendo Biologics Limited. Some brave investors at Claret Capital Partners have managed to raise a €297 million oversubscribed fund, the its Claret European Growth Capital Fund III. Professor Seteve Jackson, founder of KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, Mission Therapeutics, and Adrestia Therapeutics, is joining the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. But, now the real question: are microorganisms patentable? It is complicated. Sara Holland elaborates on this in the Interesting Readings section. And while we are at it… what is the most extensive genetic study in people outside the U.S., the U.K., or Iceland? This week’s song —September… sigh— is Bitter Sweet Symphony (btw, Urban Hymns, what an album, friends). Next Monday, the Politics of DNA with the great Adam Rutherford at the Royal Society. Let’s dive in!

Laverock Therapeutics has emerged from stealth and has opened labs in the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst. The company, formerly registered as Skylark Therapeutics, is developing a gene silencing platform called Gene Editing induced Gene Silencing (GEiGS) enabled by advance computational tools. GEiGS leverages universal gene editing tools and advance bioinformatics to edit specific non-coding genes from the host’s cells and redirect their RNAi-based silencing activity towards the desired target gene. The aim is to engineer induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived for allogenic, adaptive cell therapies and improve their efficacy and safety profiles. Laverock has an exclusive license from Tropic Bioscience, the majority stakeholder in the company, to utilise their proprietary technology beyond plants, in particular, for human-related diseases . The current pipeline includes allogeneic programmes in Type 1 Diabetes and solid tumour directed immune therapy. Dr David Venables is the Chief Executive Officer (former President of AskBio Europe, CEO at Synpromics and Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh); Dr Tim Allsoppis the Chieff Technology Officer (former coordinator of the European Stem Cell Bank and Senior Research Fellow at Pfizer); and Dr Vlad Seitan is the Chief Scientific Officer (Former Group Leader at King’s College London at the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics).

Neurofenix has raised €7 million series A. The round was led by AlbionVC and participated by HTH, InHealth Ventures and other existing investors. The startup has also announced the Advisory Board which includes Shirin Dehghan (operating partner at scale-up investor Frog Capital) and Dr Charles Carignan as Non-Executide Director (former CMO at Boston Scientific). The company was founded in 2016 by CEO Guillem Singla Buxarrais and CTO Dimitrios Athanasiou. It aims to improve rehabilitation for patients of neurological injury, as well as enable them to regain functionality and mobility. Neurofenix has developed a clinical-grade and personalized rehab programme that uses a combination of proprietary sensor-based technology that detects tiny movements so it can be used by impaired patients, and a telemedicine platform that receives real-time feedback from the sensors. The proceedings of the round will be used to bring the platform to US and start clinical trials.

London-based Diurnal Group PLC has been acquired by US-based Neurocrine Biosciences for $56.5 millions in an all-cash transaction. Neurocrine is utilises the drug launching growth model and has approved therapies for tardive dyskinesia, Parkinson’s disease, endometriosis, and uterine fibroids. Diurnal was founded in 2004 with a focus on hormone therapeutics to treat rare and chronic endocrine conditions. The company has a pipeline of candidates to treat hypogonadism, hypothyroidism and other endocrine disorders. The acquisition is expected to close by late October or early November.

Bright Green has published a letter of intent to acquire UK-based Alterola Biotech. Bright Green will initially purchase 25% of the issued and outstanding common stock of Alterola for $4 million. The letter grants a 6-month option to purchase Alterola’s remaining stock for an additional $6 million and approximately $40 million in Bright Green common stock.

GripAble and Dr Firat Güder from the Department of Bioengineering at the Imperial College London have been awarded £800,000 from Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst grant. The funding will be used to bring GripAble’s SqueezAble to the clinic. The device combines soft-sensing technology and interactive gamification to enable upper-limb therapy for paediatric cerebral palsy patients. GripAble has partnered with Imperial’s Guder Research Group, which developed the underlying patent-pending soft-sensing technology. In the UK, there are an estimated 187,000 children living with an arm disability, and 85 million worldwide.

London-based Thalamos has raised $1 million seer round. The financing was led by Ascension (Conduit Impact EIS Fund) and participated by angel investors including Syndicate Room, and a private Seedrs crowdfund. Thalamos enables people covered by the Mental Health Act quicker and safer access to vital treatment by enabling their care to be organised digitally. The tools allows to reduce the risk of error by up to 89% in comparison to current paper-based processes. The company was founded in 2018 by Arden Tomison and Ross Tomison and currently works with seven mental health care providers and over 40,000 practitioners providers across England including the NHS. The proceedings of the round will be used to expand the team and advance their product.

Claret Capital Partners has raised €297 million (final closing) for its Claret European Growth Capital Fund III. Claret is a London-based Pan-European growth capital provider. The Fund III has secured commitments from entrepreneurs, industry experts and a broad range of leading institutional investors including EIF, British Business Investments, RAG-Stiftung, Certior Capital and KfW Capital, as well as five new institutional investors (Allied Irish Banks, Aozora Bank, Banca March, HNA, and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund). In addition, a number of co-investment agreements have been signed to offer loan facilities of up to €50 million. Claret’s ‘Fund III’ will back innovative businesses in the technology and life sciences sector. Over €500 million will be deployed to support an 50-60 companies over the next three years. Claret was set up in 2020 though the management buyout of Harbert European Growth Capital. Recent exits include Bright Computing (acquired by NVIDIA) and Longboat Clinical (acquired by Advarra) as well as the publicly held Eurobio Scientific (EPA: ALERS).

The London Fund has committed £30 million inveestment to the real estate fund Yoo Fund. Yoo Fund is wholly owned by Yoo Capital Management and Astarte Special Opportunities Platform L.P and focuses on the redevelopment of existing assets in Greater London, specially those related to life sciences, healthcare, and creative industries.

KPMG Private Enterprise has published the Venture Pulse Q2 2022 report.

Forcefield Therapeutics has published pivotal preclinical data in Science Translational Medicine. The work outlines the mechanisms of the three proteins (Chrdl1, Fam3c and Fam3b), which have been shown to restore heart function following a heart attack in mice. Heart failure is the primary cause of death and disability globally, affecting approximately 64 million people worldwide according to the British Heart Foundation. Syncona-backed Forcefield Therapeutics was launched in 2022 to develop therapeutics to retain heart function via protection of cardiomyocytes. The work originated at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biology and the University of Trieste. Led by Prof Mauro Giacca, Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at King’s College London, they had developed FunSel, an unbiased protein search engine that screens a library of human proteins to identify those with therapeutic potential.

London-based Mereo BioPharma has laid off employees, with headcount and other “program related and general and administrative cost reductions” according to a letter to its main shareholder Rubric Capital Management. The issue roots back to Rubric calls for four new board directors, which Mereo’s current board believes are under-qualified. Rubric also requested cash distributed to shareholders.

Professor Seteve Jackson is joining the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Prof Jackson is the University of Cambridge Frederick James Quick Professor of Biology and Head of Cancer Research UK Laboratories at the Gurdon Institute. He has founded three biotech startups, KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, Mission Therapeutics, and Adrestia Therapeutics, and his research aims to characterise DNA damage repair components and pathways.

Ori Biotech has announced additions to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) upon series B funding and is expanding global reach. Isabelle Riviere joins the SAB and brings 25 years of CGT experience, including from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where she is currently director of the Cell Therapy and Cell Engineering Laboratory. She is also co-founder of Juno Therapeutics, and a board member of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Jason Bock has also joined the SAB (former VP and Head of Biologics Product Development at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center). In addition, the company is opening a new laboratory and corporate facility in Princeton (New Jersey) and a new Technology Centre in Cambridge (UK). Ori Biotech is a London-and New Jersey-based manufacturing technology company working to improve the discovery process, scalability and commercialization process of cell and gene therapies.

The Sheffield Gene Therapy Innovation and Manufacturing Centre (GTIMC) is now complete. The GTIMC is one of 3 cutting-edge hubs in the UK dedicated to advancing the clinical development of new genetic treatments and will be fully operational in early 2023. The GTIMC is located at the Sheffield Hub, which is part of an £18 million network created by LifeArc and the Medical Research Council (MRC), with support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and a £3 million donation from The Law Family Charitable Foundation.

The Innovate UK research hub High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) has reported a £1.5bn manufacturing dividend opportunity in the West Midlands. HMVC has now moved into Innovation Birmingham, part of the Bruntwood SciTechnetwork. According to the report, the West Midland’s manufacturing sector is the second largest in the UK (317,000 jobs), where the top 50 manufacturing enterprises provide £3.5bn gross value added each year.

Sana Capital has appointed Dr David Brown to its Advisory Board. Dr Brown is co-founder and Chair of the Board of Healx, and co-founder of Crescendo Biologics Limited. He was previously at Pfizer and Roche as Global Head of Drug Discovery. Sana Capital is a Cambridge-based healtcare private equity firm.

Bicycle Therapeutics has appointed Michael Palmer as Vice President of Translational Oncology (US-based). He joins from C4 Therapeutics where he also was Vice President of Translational Oncology. Previously, Palmer developed senior roles at Blueprint Medicines, Novartis and Adnexus Therapeutics.

Sosei Group Corporation has announced winning the Licensing Deal of the Year and Executive of the Year (Chris Cargill) at the 1st Informa Pharma Intelligence Awards Japan held yesterday in Tokyo.

Pharmaxis Ltd (ASX:PXS, OTC:PMXSF) has been awarded £2.9 million from Parkinson’s UK to support Phase 2 trials for drug candidate PXS-4782. The trial is set to examine whether targeting inflammation in the brain of people suffering from isolated Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behaviour Disorder (iRBD) provides a neuroprotective strategy to prevent Parkinson. The trila will run in collaboration with experts from the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford. The study will recruit 40 patients with iRBD to participate in a placebo‐controlled Phase 2 trial to study if PXS‐4728 can reduce neuroinflammation.

Avacta Group PLC (AIM: AVCT) has announced the first-in-human Phase I trial (ALS-6000-101) of AVA6000 Pro-doxorubicin is advancing to the fourth dose cohort of patients. Positive review of the safety and tolerability data from third cohort has allowed to move the trial forward. AVA6000 is a novel form of doxorubicin that has been modified with Avacta’s pre|CISION™ FAP-activated delivery platform to improve its safety and therapeutic index (improved cell penetrability) and thus reduced dosing. The drug is activated only by fibroblast activation protein α which is in high concentration in many solid tumours compared with healthy tissues. Anthracyclines (e.g. doxorubicin) are chemotherapeutic agents widely used as standard of care in several tumour types. However cumulative dose toxicity associates with cardiomyopathy.

London-based hVIVO, a subsidiary of Open Orphan PLC (AIM: ORPH) has signed a £10.4 million full-serce contract with existing top 5 pharmaceutical company to develop new influenza challenge strain to test oral antiviral candidate.

The story of the most extensive genetic study in people outside the U.S., the U.K., or Iceland: the Mexico City Prospective Study.

Entry-level article for those wondering why biotech investors love platforms. Featuring Todd Thomson (COO and CFO of Kairos Ventures) and Sara Choi, (Partner at Wing VC), among others.

“Genomics software is helping to transform large volumes of unstructured data into actionable knowledge with open-source tools and data architecture that is applicable for clinical genomics at scale”, writes Sophia Ktori in Scientific Computing (Page 20).

Heads up, synbio people — Very good piece by Sara Holland on whether microorganisms are patentable.

Micro Focus: rolling up the roll-up reduces London’s tech appeal.

Now we are talking: British startups finding it harder to access funding. The Guardianhas talked to four founders and their experiences to raise funds. Spoiler: One of them (sigh) ended up moving to the US.