Lila Sciences' $235m first round, and other biofinancings

Just a few months after emerging from the Flagship Pioneering incubator with $200 million in seed financing, Lila Sciences has raised another $235 million in a first round that will further the development of its AI-powered, fully autonomous lab technology.

The Series A, co-led by Braidwell and Collective Global, will help Lila meet its goal of creating 'AI science factories' that combine AI, automation, and custom robotics to "generate hypotheses, design experiments, run them, learn from the results, and iterate – thousands of times over," said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, the company's chief executive and a former Flagship partner.

The cash injection will help expand the Cambridge, Massachusetts company's headcount and open new hubs in Boston, San Francisco, and London. The company is focusing on medicines/life sciences, as well as materials science, chemistry, agriculture, and energy technologies.

"Building a beautiful, superintelligent mind for science requires a new kind of body for science," von Maltzahn wrote in a blog post on the fundraising. "Lila's AI Science Factories are that body – unified facilities where AI, novel software, and custom hardware close the loop between reasoning and real-world verification."

The company's work in life sciences has been focused on building agents that design and validate novel protein therapeutics, nucleic acids, chemistries, and diagnostics, he added, in areas including cancer, obesity, and immune diseases.

Other recent funding rounds

Well-financed Boston biotech Odyssey Therapeutics has added $213 million to its cash pile via a Series D, a few months after abandoning plans for an initial public offering.

The specialist in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases is working a small molecule RIPK2 inhibitor, OD-07656, which is in phase 2 testing for ulcerative colitis as a monotherapy and in combination with Takeda's blockbuster inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) therapy Entyvio (vedolizumab). It also has two preclinical-stage programmes targeting IRAK4 and TNFR2.

Along with existing investors, participants in the Series D included new backers Affinity Asset Advisors, Dimension Capital, Jeito Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, TPG Life Sciences Innovations, and Wedbush Healthcare Partners. The latest financing follows a $101 million third round in 2023, a $168 million second round in 2022, and a Series A in in 2021 that netted $218 million.

Newly launched ophthalmology company Ollin Biosciences has emerged onto the scene with $100 million in backing and a mission to bring a rival drug for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that will compete with Roche's big-selling Vabysmo (faricimab).

The candidate, codenamed OLN324, is a VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody with a similar mechanism of action as Vabysmo, but greater potency, according to the Austin, Texas outfit, which is led by former Roche executive Jason Ehrlich. It is in a head-to-head phase 1b trial against Vabysmo. Meanwhile, Ollin is also working on second programme, OLN102, that it describes as a first-in-class TSHR/IGF-1R bispecific antibody with potential in treating thyroid eye disease (TED) and Graves' disease.

The startup financing has been provided by a group of investors led by ARCH Venture Partners, Mubadala Capital, and Monograph Capital.

Spanish RNA medicines startup ARTHEx Biotech raised $87 million in an extended Series B led by new investor Bpifrance that will fund clinical development of lead candidate ATX-01, an antimiR oligonucleotide in phase 1/2a testing for neuromuscular disease myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1). The drug boosts the expression of MBNL, a protein that is deficient in DM1.

Part of the funding – also backed by existing investors AdBio Partners, CDTI Innovación, Columbus Venture Partners, the European Innovation Council, Hadean Ventures, Invivo Partners, and Sound Bioventures – will be used to bring other RNA-based medicines in ARTHEx's pipeline through development, said the Valencia company.

South San Francisco biotech Dualitas emerged from stealth this week with the announcement of a $65 million first-round financing round and a pipeline of bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) for immune and inflammatory diseases that are designed to offer greater efficacy and a swifter onset of action.

The proceeds will be used to advance two lead programmes, DTX-103 for allergic diseases and DTX-102 for arthritis, which are both at the lead-generation and optimisation stage of development, and also to develop and refine the company's DualScreen BsAb discovery engine. The series A funding round was co-led by Versant Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners USA, with drugmaker Eli Lilly also taking part.

Finally, Shanghai, China-based YolTech Therapeutics completed a $45 million Series B – led by the AstraZeneca-CICC healthcare investment fund – that will go towards trials of its one-shot, in vivo gene-editing therapies.

The company's pipeline is led by YOLT-201, a CRISPR-based therapy for transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR) that started a phase 1/2a trial programme last year in China, with follow-up programmes in heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia, primary hyperoxaluria type 1, and beta-thalassemia/sickle cell disease.

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