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Attovia Therapeutics Raises $105 Million to Treat Immune Diseases
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By Brian Gormley, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Attovia Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing treatments for immunological diseases, has refueled with $105 million in new venture capital to develop medicines for patients who suffer from itchy skin due to atopic dermatitis.
This Series B round, led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, follows the $60 million Series A financing that Fremont, Calif.-based Attovia raised in 2023. The company is developing new drugs it calls Attobodies. Though the company hopes to use Attobodies for a variety of diseases, one initial condition it is targeting is atopic dermatitis, the most-common form of eczema.
In atopic dermatitis, the immune system is disordered and overactive, leading the skin to become dry and itchy, according to the National Eczema Association. In severe cases, the disorder can leave people unable to concentrate or sleep, according to the association, which says the condition affects some 9.6 million children and 16.5 million adults in the U.S. There is no cure for atopic dermatitis and it can be difficult to treat, according to the association.
Attovia’s Attobodies can bind to two sites on the same target protein, like holding an object with two hands instead of one, according to Chief Executive Tao Fu. As a result, its drugs can latch on tightly to their target, which Attovia hopes will lead to more effective treatments. In addition, it can create therapies that bind to more than one protein.
With this financing, Attovia said it will move its first two drugs, which both have potential to treat atopic dermatitis, into clinical trials.
Attovia is one of several startups raising venture capital to develop novel treatments for immunological and inflammatory disorders. This week, another biotech, Zenas BioPharma, raised a $200 million Series C financing.
And now on to the news...
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Noland Arbaugh is the first human trial patient to have a Neuralink implant. PHOTO: NEURALINK
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Brain implant. Neuralink encountered a problem with the implant in its first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, that reduced the amount of data it could capture from his brain, according to a blog post the company published on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Some data was lost because a number of the implant’s threads that had been placed in Arbaugh’s brain came out. The company, owned by Elon Musk, didn’t disclose the reason why some threads retracted unexpectedly. Neuralink posted about the problem on its blog after the Journal inquired about the issue.
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One factor that Neuralink explored that may have contributed to the threads coming out is that air was trapped inside Arbaugh’s skull after surgery, a condition called pneumocephalus, according to people familiar with the events. The problem hasn’t appeared to pose a risk to safety of Arbaugh, a quadriplegic since a 2016 diving accident. Even so, the possibility of removing Arbaugh’s implant, a so-called “explantation,” was floated, said these people.
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The company said in its blog post that the retracted threads led to a reduction in bits-per-second, a measure of the speed and accuracy of Arbaugh’s ability to control a computer cursor with only his thoughts. In response the company said it made changes including modifying its algorithms that improved bits-per-second.
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$75 Million
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The amount hospital landlord Medical Properties Trust will lend to Steward Health Care System, which has filed for bankruptcy.
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One of the Biggest Hospital Failures in Decades Raises Concerns
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Hospitals in eight states are at risk of running out of cash after their owner filed for bankruptcy, potentially pitting the chain’s creditors against regulators, who raced to address concerns about safety, WSJ reports. Steward Health Care System became one of the largest hospital bankruptcies in decades when it filed for chapter 11 early Monday. The chain, which operates 30 hospitals, has been in dire financial straits for months, failing to pay bills and burning through emergency loans. State regulators are worried about Steward, whose physicians provide care for 2.2 million patients a year. In one Steward hospital, bats prompted the evacuation of an intensive-care unit. At others, traveling nurses left
after not being paid, and executives have swapped equipment to fill gaps.
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Steward Health Will Need More Loans to Stay Afloat in Bankruptcy
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Steward Health Care System will need to borrow more money to survive bankruptcy than hospital landlord Medical Properties Trust is willing to provide, Steward lawyer Ray Schrock said at the company’s debut court appearance after filing for chapter 11, WSJ reports. MPT has committed to providing $75 million in loans to Steward, but that won’t be enough to last the company over the months it needs to sell off its hospitals and other assets, Schrock said at a hearing Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston.
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Crypto Exchange FTX Will Repay Victims in Full
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Defunct crypto exchange FTX said it will have more than enough money to fully repay its millions of swindled customers with interest, an outcome that seemed unthinkable when it collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022. FTX said in court papers Tuesday that it will have $14.5 billion to $16.3 billion in cash after liquidating its cryptocurrency holdings and other investments, more than enough to cover the roughly $11 billion that customers and nongovernment creditors are owed.
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People
HM Venture Partners, a global healthcare venture-capital firm, said Harry Hoffman and David Herbert have joined as venture partners. Hoffman previously was chief investment officer at Mayo Clinic. Herbert previously was chief administrative officer of Mayo Clinic Laboratories.
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Prologue Medicines, a company seeking to unlock the therapeutic potential of the viral proteome, has been launched by Flagship Pioneering. Flagship said it has initially committed $50 million to the company, which intends to develop medicines for diseases including immunological, oncology and metabolic conditions.
Backpack Healthcare, an online pediatric healthcare provider, said it has raised $14 million in Series A funding. The company, formerly called Youme Healthcare, said it is using artificial intelligence to improve pediatric mental health with a particular focus on Medicaid-enrolled youths.
Ciba Health, a digital-health company that seeks to prevent and reverse chronic diseases through root-cause treatment, said it has raised a $10 million Series A round. The company also said it has appointed Nwamaka Imasogie, formerly a principal software engineer on the healthcare AI team at Microsoft, as chief technology officer.
Humanaut Health, a premium clinic for health optimization and longevity, said it raised $8.7 million in seed financing. The financing will support care model development–which includes regenerative, hormone, and lifestyle medicine services–and its expansion of membership-based clinics to major U.S. markets, the company said.
Think Bioscience, a Boulder, Colo.-based synthetic-biology company developing small-molecule therapeutics that target "undruggable" proteins, said it has raised a $6 million seed expansion. The additional funding will accelerate the company's pipeline and expand its approach for finding new functional pockets on challenging targets, the company said.
Testmate Health, a startup involved in at-home testing, said it has secured $6 million in seed funding to develop an over-the-counter self-test for sexually transmitted infections, starting with chlamydia and gonorrhea.
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Julianna Ferrone, who was diagnosed with stage-3 cervical cancer several years ago, holds a poster depicting her ‘Team Julianna’ Facebook support group.
PHOTO: AUDRA MELTON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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