In QuotedData’s morning briefing 9 February 2024:
- Schroders Capital Global Innovation Trust (INOV) has invested US$1.6m in Neurona Therapeutics through its Series E financing round, which raised US$120m. The fundraising was co-led by Viking Global Investors and Cormorant Asset Management with participation from new and existing investors including The Column Group, Passaic Capital Management, Lyfe Capital, Willett Advisors, Ysios Capital Partners, Euclidean Capital, Ironfire Ventures, Sphera Fund Management, SymBiosis Capital Management, UCB Ventures, and UC Regents. Neurona is a clinical-stage cell therapy company focused on discovering and developing allogeneic neural cell therapies to treat chronic diseases of the nervous system. Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance the company’s pipeline of wholly-owned, off-the-shelf cell therapies for multiple indications, including its lead investigational candidate, NRTX-1001. NRTX-1001 is being evaluated in an ongoing open-label, single-arm Phase I/II clinical trial for treatment of drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), with further potential application in Alzheimer’s disease. In December 2023, Neurona reported that NRTX-1001 has been well tolerated in all initial subjects and the first two subjects continue to report a >95% reduction in overall average monthly seizure counts one year after treatment. The company currently has three additional cell therapies in the preclinical stage of development as experimental cell therapies for the treatment of chronic neurological disorders.
- RTW Biotech Opportunities’ (RTW’s) portfolio company Kyverna Therapeutics raised US$319m from its initial public offering (IPO), which is US$137m greater than the initial estimate that was made last week. Kyverna is a clinical-stage cell therapy biopharma company engineering a new class of therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Kyverna’s therapeutic platform combines advanced T-cell engineering and synthetic biology technologies to suppress or eliminate the autoreactive immune cells at the origin of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Kyverna’s lead asset, KYV-101, is in Phase 1 testing for lupus nephritis and systemic sclerosis, and in Phase 2 testing for myasthenia gravis and multiple sclerosis. RTW initially invested in Kyverna’s Series B round in early 2022 and, as at 31 December 2023, Kyverna represented 0.45% of the company’s NAV. On the first day of trading, Kyverna’s share price traded up by 36.4% to close at $30.00 per share. Kyverna trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker KYTX.
- abrdn Diversified Income and Growth (ADIG) has published a circular in relation to the recommended proposals for a managed wind-down, the adoption of a new investment objective and policy to facilitate this, the reduction in nominal value of the company’s shares from 25 pence to one penny per share and to cancel the entire nominal value standing to the credit of the company’s capital redemption reserve. The proposals are subject to shareholder approval and, accordingly, the circular contains a notice convening a general meeting at 10am on 27 February 2024.
We also have Syncona’s Autolus’s strategic Collaboration with BioNTech.