Top news of the week: 04.02.2021.
Startups
Abingworth raises $465M fund, steps up interest in CNS diseases
Abingworth has raised a $465 million life sciences fund, positioning it to build on earlier investments in biotechs including Alnylam and CRISPR Therapeutics. The transatlantic fund will ...
Novavax says its coronavirus vaccine was highly effective in a UK trial, but it didn't work nearly as well against the variant first found in South Africa
The shot was much less effective in a smaller trial in South Africa, where it faced a new variant of the coronavirus, the company said.
GSK sees lower profit this year, split plans on track
Britain's GSK forecast a dip in earnings this year as it grapples with COVID-19 disruptions and invests in its pipeline of new drugs, and said its plans to split into two businesses were on ...
New Synthetic Biology Venture Fund Puts ‘Scientist Founders’ First
Synthetic biology investment set a nearly $8 billion record in 2020. The trend of increased biotech venture capital continues in 2021 with the newly announced fund NFX Bio.
GameStop Day Traders Are Moving Into SPACs
So-called blank-check companies are a hit with individual investors looking for speculative trades.
With $588M IPO, Sana leads wave of new biotechs going public
Nine other drug developers are set to price initial public offerings this week, extending a record run of financing activity from last year. Sana's is one of the largest in history.
Chutes & Ladders—Roivant's Ramaswamy pegs CFO Gline for chief executive role
Karuna Pharmaceuticals tapped neuroscience veteran Ronald Marcus, M.D., as its new SVP of medical. Roivant CEO Ramaswamy is moving up to an executive chairman role. Faze Medicines names ...
Easy-to-deliver mRNA treatment shows promise for stopping flu and Covid-19 viruses
With a relatively minor genetic change, a new treatment developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University appears to stop replication of both …