There is only one thing better that announcing a successful financing round and that is announcing actual scientific results. Big week for the science in both startups and publicly listed companies. There are two big shows going on in Britain and, friends, I am unsure whether any of them will end up too well, i.e., Tories leadership contest and Arm listing in UK. Even Abcam is crossing the pond to NASDAQ, bye-bye AIM. The grass is greener for Syncona-backed companies: PureSpring and SwanBio are collaborating, and Achilles is leading the European (!) Horizon Program for developing first-in-class manufacturing processes for personalised cell therapy. Catherine Lewis La Torre has been appointed CEO of British Patient Capital and Kate Bingham is not impressed by the missed opportunity to build capabilities that help tackling the next pandemic. Broken String Biosciences has published interesting research for those interested in editing technologies. The Oxford biotech ecosystem keeps showing its strengths as Oxford Science Enterprise raises £250 million to back great science despite of the challenging investing landscape. Rather conveniently, this reminds us that biotech industry plays and hopefully keeps playing the long game. Let’s dive in!

Cambridge-based startup Paragraf has been awarded £500,000 Biomedical Catalystgrant from Innovate UK. The company has started a 2-year programme to develop a proof-of-concept for an affordable, portable, graphene-based in vitro diagnostic test which measures both procalcitonin (PTC) and with C-reactive protein (CRP), The test will inform in real time about the convenience of a particular antibiotic therapy in real time. The program is running in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, the University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT). A clinical study of the PCT/CRP test will be carried out at the MFT’s Diagnostics and Technology Accelerator, aiming to address unmet medical conditions and improve patient care within the NHS. The PCT/CRP test will be the first of a series of rapid, high sensitivity tests for biomarkers in areas including oncology, cardiovascular disease, and infectious diseases. Paragraf is backed by New Science Ventures, Parkwalk, Amadeus Capital Partners, Martlet Capital, IQ Capital, Molten Ventures, British Patient Capital, and In-Q-Tel.

AffyXell has raised further investment from existing and new investors. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. AffyXell is a joined venture between Avacta Group PLC(LON: AVCT) and Daewoong Pharmaceutical (KS: 069620). The proceedings of the round will be used to advance its lead mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) programme, support clinical studies to enable an Investigational New Drug (IND) application and bring forward its preclinical pipeline of cell therapies for immune diseases. AffyXell's cell and gene therapies are based on MSC and incorporate Affimer, Avacta’s proprietary technology. These stem cell therapies are designed to produce Affimer proteins, a biotherapeutic based on a naturally occurring human protein called Stefin A. Affimers can potentially help minimising inflammatory or autoimmune responses to the stem cell therapy

Hexham-based startup RareCan has raised £340,000 seed funding. The round raised by multiple angel investors such as Women Angels of the North Syndicate. Last year, RareCan raised a £200,000 pre-seed round backed by Women Angels of the North Syndicate. RareCan hopes to raise further investment up to £700,000. The startup is working to speed up research and ultimately improving outcomes for people with rarer forms of cancer. It has developed a direct to patient clinical trial platform, leveraging bioinformatics and consumer technologies to put trial participation into the hands of patients.

Now, sigh, British public markets: Abcam has announced delisting from AIM to rely exclusively on NASDAQ. The decision comes from the lack of liquidity in trading shares in London vs. New York. Based in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Abcam expects to report total revenues (2022, Q1 and Q2) of approx. £185 million, a 19% growth compared to the previous period.

Not biotech-related and yet another nail in the British public markets coffin: Softbankhas paused discussion with the UK Government about Arm’s UK listing next year. Cambridge-based software company Arm was acquired for $32 billion in 2016 and supplies the intellectual property that powers most of the world’s smartphones, including Samsung and Apple. Sofbank alleges political turmoil but, between us, this is only one of the reasons. Ultimately, this could lead to listing in US, which is still what SoftBank's billionaire founder, Masayoshi Son, was favouring from the beginning.

Oxford Science Enterprise (OSE) has raised £250 million to fuel the creation and growth of transformational startups leveraging Oxford science. OSD is backed by international investors, as well as existing and new blue-chip investors, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, pension funds and asset managers. OSE was founded in 2015 and, to date, has invested £0.5 billion in over 80 startups, including 27 companies from seed to Series A and 21 to Series B and beyond, including 2 IPOs and 5 trade exits such as Vaccitech (NASDAQ IPO, 2021), Base Genomics (early-stage cancer detection technology, acquired in 2020 by Exact Sciences for $410 million), OMass Therapeutics (novel drug pipeline for immunology and rare diseases, $100 million Series B in April 2022), MiroBio (pipeline of immune checkpoint agonists for autoimmune diseases, $97 million Series B in June 2022), and moa Technology(safe and sustainable herbicides and improve crop yields, $44 million Series B in May 2022), among others. Overall, the Oxford biotech ecosystem has seen a sustained improvement: investment in Oxford-based spinouts increased from an average of £125 million per year (2011 –2015) to £650 million (2016 – 2021).

Catherine Lewis La Torre has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of British Patient Capital and Chair of British Business Investments, as well as Senior Responsible Officer for the Bank’s other equity schemes. La Torre joined British Business Bank (BBB) from Cardano Risk Management in 2016, where she was Head of Private Equity and was appointed CEO in September 2020. British Patient Capital is a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of BBB and is the Britain’s largest domestic investor in venture and growth opportunities. Previously, she was Partner and Managing Director of Fondinvest Capital (Paris) and co-founded Proventure, a fund-of-funds investing in venture and growth capital funds and companies across Western Europe.

Purespring Therapeutics has entered a licensing agreement with SwanBio Therapeutics for using the FunSel screeening platform. SwanBio will license the FunSel screening platform from Purespring to explore new targets for early-stage pipeline programs. FunSel is a gene-agnostic (i.e., it does not rely on which gene is causing a particular disease) library of thousands of AAV vectors encoding secreted proteins. This allows applying gene therapy to non-monogenic disorders and aim to treat broader patient populations. SwanBio will have the option to develop and commercialised the identified targets and Purespring will be entitled to commercialisation milestones and royalties. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Broken String Biosciences (BSB) has published in Nature Communications the science behind their technology INDUCE-seq: “Precision digital mapping of endogenous and induced genomic DNA breaks by INDUCE-seq”. BSB is developing a technology platform to characterise how the different genome editing technologies interact and alter the genome. This information is key for improving the efficiency of the editing systems and has the potential to unlock new targets for therapeutic development. BSB is backed by Illumina and Tencent Holdings.

RxCelerate has launched RxNfinity, a machine-learning enabled small molecule discovery platform which in silicomodels the structure and the drug-target combinatorial chemistry in a single workflow. Existing chemical space libraries fall short in representing the vast diversity of possible molecules, being Merck MASSIV the largest library available with just 1020 molecules. RxNfinity has modified the ‘virtual synthon’ approach and developed a machine learning platform to make the available chemical space smarter rather than just larger.

London-based Touchlight has entered a licensing agreement with Pfizer for their enzymatic doggybone DNA (dbDNA) technology. dbDNA technology produces minimal, linear, double stranded, covalently closed DNA vector through a proprietary enzymatic manufacturing process. It can manufacture genes over 20 kb as well as typically unstable sequences such as those found in viral vectors and mRNA production. The licensing allows Pfizer to speed up the production of DNA templates for mRNA-based vaccines and other therapeutics. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

V7 Labs is developing a pioneering AI-solution for melanoma detection. Their technology is part of the Intelligent Total Body Scanner (iToBos), a €12 million consortium awarded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program. iToBoS photographs each mole at a higher resolution and use additional information to determine the level of melanoma risk for each lesion. V7’s technology is used to apply tags to every patient and lesion to accurately represent both demographics and up to 16 lesion types. V7 was founded in 2018 by Alberto Rizzoli (CEO) and Simon Edwards (CTO). the company is looking to make deep learning more robust and easier to develop so that any business can implement state-of-the-art AI from a single platform. V7 Labs raised $3 million seed funding backed by Amadeus Capital Partners, Air Street Capital and Miele Venture.

OMass Therepeutics has appointed Jon Roffey, PhD as Vice President (VP) and Head of Medicinal Chemistry. Dr Roffey joins from Nanna Therapeutics, where he was Head of Drug Discovery. He was Director of Chemistry at the Cambridge-spinout Azeria Therapeutics and Senior Group Leader and at Spirogen. OMass is working to discover medicines against highly-validated target ecosystems, such as membrane proteins or intracellular complexes.

Resolution Therapeutics has appointed Dr Bill Symonds as Non-Executive Director. Dr Symonds is CEO of Altavant Sciences and Enzyvant Sciences (Sumitovantwholly-owned subsidiaries). He has held various senior leadership positions at Pharmasset, where he led the development and commercialisation of Sovaldi and Harvoni, the leading Hepatitis C virus treatments, Gilead (VP Liver Disease Therapeutic Area) and GSK. Syncona-backed Resolution Therapeutics is developing macrophage cell therapies to treat advanced liver disease.

Ixaka has appointed Dr Karen Miller as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr Miller joins from Adaptimmune plc where she was Senior Vice President of Pipeline Research. Prior to that, she was Vice President and Head of the Immunology Innovation Fund at GSK. The appointment has been powered by Precision BioSearch. Ixaka is a cell and gene therapy scale-up with operations in Britain, Spain and France. Its proprietary technologies (concentrated multi-cell therapies and targeted nanoparticles) are designed for a broad range of serious diseases across oncology, cardiovascular, neurological and ocular diseases, and genetic disorders.

Deep Branch has appointed Anders Clausen as Chief Innovation Officer. Clausen joins from founding Productus (guidance on R&D strategy and production process development in biotech). Prior to this, he spent over a10 years at Christian Hansenfocusing on developing new products and production platform technologies. Deep Branch was founded in 2018 and is developing a proprietary platform which uses carbon dioxide and hydrogen as carbon and energy sources to deliver next-generation bio-based products.

Complement Therapeutics has appointed Steve Axon as Independent Director to its Board of Directors. Axon has over 20 years of biotech experience and is currently CEO of Glycomine (clinical-stage company developing therapies for neglected orphan diseases). He was CEO of Prothelia, CBO at Apellis, and Senior Vice President of Business Development at Merck KGaA. Forbion and Biogeneration Ventures-backed Complement Therapeutics is an early-stage biotech startup developing therapeutics for complement-mediated diseases leveraging their proprietary quantification methodology, the Complement Precision Medicine platform.

Brainomix has appointed Melissa Strange as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Dr Jérôme Galbrun as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Strange joins from Closed Loop Medicine (CFO), and has helped companies such as Summit Therapeutics and Kuano to grow from early-stage to commercial launch preparations. Dr Galbrun joins from Philips(Senior Director, Lead Global Sales and Business Development for the Electronic Medical Records, and Care Management Business Unit), and has held various leadership positions at Agfa HealthCare, Hewlett-Packard and GE Healthcare. Brainomix is backed by Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Parkwalk Advisors, Tencent Holdings and the Oxford University Innovation Fund. The startup is developing AI-enabled software to improve precision medicine for better treatment decisions in stroke and certain lung conditions.

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Oxford Biomedica (LSE:OXB) has expanded the License and Clinical Supply Agreement (“LSA”) with Juno Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bristol Myers Squibb Company. The LSA grants Juno a non-exclusive license to Oxford Biomedica’s proprietary LentiVector platform. The license will be used to manufacture viral vectors for CAR-T and TCR-T programs in oncology and other indications. The LSA expansion includes the addition of two new viral vector programmes for Bristol Myers Squibb CAR-T therapies. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

F-star Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FSTX) has entered an agreement with Takeda (LON: 0A87) for $1 million licensing fe, up to $40 million in commercialisation milestones, and single-digit percentage royalties on annual net sales. The agreement grants Takeda worldwide, exclusive (royalty-bearing) license to research and commercialise a bispecific antibody against an undisclosed immuno-oncology target using F-star’s proprietary Fcab and mAb2 platforms.

Destiny Pharma (AIM: DEST) has announced positive update from US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on XF-73 Phase 3 study design and development programme. XF-73 is the company’s lead candidate developed using their XF platform. XF-73 is a nasal gel and has been developed for prevention of post-surgical staphylococcal infections (e.g.methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Destiny Pharma is also exploring a global Phase 3 clinical programme meeting requirements of both FDA and European Medicines Agency. A successful Ph3 could bring XF-73 to breast surgery procedures and many other surgical procedures where decolonisation is recommended. Approximately 33% of the global population carriers of S. aureus in the nose, a significantly higher risk of acquiring a post-surgical infection.

Achilles Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ACHL) will lead the €4.2 million Horizon Europe-funded consortium to develop first-in-class smart bioprocessing manufacturing platform for personalised cell therapy. The consortium includes the Leibniz University Hannover (project coordinator), the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, and the Fundacion para la Investigacion del Hospital Universitario La Fe (Comunidad de Valencia, Spain). €1.4 million will be allocated to Achilles Therapeutcis via the Horizon Europe Guarantee from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The project, named SMARTER, will focus on incorporating inline spectroscopic sensors and machine learning-enabled controlling systems to provide sufficient real-time data during the cell therapy manufacturing process.

Former British vaccines tsar and managing Partner at SV Health Investors Kate Bingham suggests lessons not learned about need for scientific and commercial expertise in government.

Cambridge has been named the UK’s most AI-ready city. Unofficial sources indicate the test to rank Cambridge at the top did not include an AI-driven autonomous bike or pedestrian crossing Regent Street at peak time (at any time, really), otherwise the results may have been different.

TTP has released a great podcast episode titled Life Science Investment: How to invest in change. They talk to with Dr Gonzalo Garcia, Chief of Staff at Syncona and Board observer at Resolution Therapeutics, and Dr Jason Mellad, CEO and co-founder of Start Codon.