Good day. Two of Europe’s top healthcare venture investors have refueled with large funds.

Sofinnova Partners said Monday that it had gathered €650 million ($750 million) to invest in biotechnology and medical-technology companies in Europe and North America, while Medicxi last week said it had closed on €500 million ($576 million) for a new biotech venture fund.

Meantime, San Francisco-based neuroscience investor PsyMed Ventures is raising its second fund after generating early success through investments in two biotechs with potential treatments for neurological disorders.

General Partners Matias Serebrinsky and Greg Kubin launched San Francisco-based PsyMed in 2020 to finance startups advancing what they call frontier neuroscience technologies for treating brain and mental-health conditions.

Their view was that conventional methods weren’t yielding results fast enough given the scale of the problem. Neurological conditions are the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide, the World Health Organization said last year.

“A lot of existing standards of care are about addressing symptoms; we’re interested in getting to the root cause,” Kubin said.

They saw a field poised for innovation because of advances in neurobiological research, artificial intelligence, sensors and other methods of extracting data. Progress in fields such as gene therapy and psychedelic medicines also promised new methods of intervening in brain disorders.

And now on to the news...

Fund for frontier neuroscience. Early-stage neuroscience investor PsyMed Ventures is raising its second fund after scoring early wins through investments in startups Alto Neuroscience and Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, which have potential treatments for neurological diseases.

• PsyMed raised special-purpose vehicles to back Alto and Gilgamesh. Alto went public last year. Gilgamesh in October sold its lead asset to AbbVie in a deal worth up to $1.2 billion.
   
• PsyMed raised $15 million for its first fund in 2022. The firm is raising a second fund and held a first closing midway through this year, General Partner Matias Serebrinsky said, declining to discuss further details. A regulatory filing in June said PsyMed had raised more than $9.97 million toward a fund with a total offering amount of $25 million.

A jury found Ruthia He guilty of conspiring to distribute controlled substances after her startup Done Global became a ready source of Adderall prescriptions for more than 100,000 patients. The jury found He and Done’s former top doctor, David Brody, guilty on two conspiracy counts and four counts of distributing controlled substances. He, Done’s former chief executive, was also found guilty of conspiring to obstruct justice. Both defendants, who were tried in federal court in San Francisco, could go to prison for decades. Sentencing is scheduled for February.

• The company was the subject of a series of articles in The Wall Street Journal from 2022 to 2024 describing how some Done clinicians felt pressured to prescribe stimulants such as Adderall, while others wrote prescriptions much faster than is typical for clinicians doing thorough patient evaluations.

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to buy clinical-stage biotechnology company Halda Therapeutics for $3.05 billion in cash in a deal that bolsters the healthcare giant’s oncology pipeline. J&J on Monday said the deal, slated to close within the next few months, adds Halda’s proprietary platform to develop oral, targeted therapies for multiple types of solid tumors, including prostate cancer. The New Brunswick, N.J., company said Halda’s lead candidate, HLD-0915, is a once-daily therapy for prostate cancer that has the potential to transform patient outcomes with a novel precision cancer cell-killing approach that can overcome mechanisms of resistance to treatment.

Suno, an AI music platform in which users can generate songs based on text prompts, has raised $250 million at a valuation of $2.45 billion, the company said. The fundraising round was led by Menlo Ventures with investments from Hallwood Media, Lightspeed, Matrix and NVentures, the venture capital arm of Nvidia. The valuation is up from about $500 million last year based on another fundraising round. Suno’s annual revenue has reached $200 million, mostly from subscriptions, the company said.

Funds

Medicxi closed its Fund V with €500 million in commitments to continue investing in biotechnology startups. The firm also promoted Shyam Masrani to partner.

People

Broken String Biosciences, a startup focused on advancing gene editing safety, appointed Terry Pizzie as chief executive officer, Gabe Longoria as chief commercial officer, and Felix Dobbs as chief operations officer.

Nuvig Therapeutics, a startup developing novel immunomodulatory therapeutics for patients with inflammatory autoimmune diseases, appointed Celia J.F. Lin as chief medical officer. She most recently served as CMO of Santa Ana Bio.

Function, an Austin, Texas-based lab testing platform, secured $298 million in Series B financing, bringing the company’s valuation to $2.5 billion. Redpoint Ventures led the round, which saw additional support from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Alumni Ventures, Battery Ventures, FirstMark and Menlo Ventures.

Solve Therapeutics, a San Diego-based startup developing antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumors, scored a $120 million investment. Yosemite led the funding, which included participation from Abingworth, Ally Bridge Group, Alexandria Venture Investments and General Atlantic.

Artios Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new classes of medicines for patients with hard-to-treat cancers, closed a $115 million Series D round co-led by SV Health Investors and RA Capital Management. The company has offices in the U.K. and New York.

Voize, a Berlin-based provider of an AI companion for nursing care, landed $50 million in Series A funding. Balderton Capital led the investment, which included contributions from HV Capital, Redalpine and Y Combinator.

Avanzanite Bioscience, an Amsterdam-based pharmaceutical startup focused on rare diseases, grabbed a €32 million Series A growth investment from MVM Partners.

VahatiCor, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup focused on developing a treatment for coronary microvascular dysfunction, closed a $23 million Series B round from investors including S3 Ventures and Intuitive Ventures.

WellBeam, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup dedicated to improving clinical care management between acute and post-acute providers, collected $10 million in Series A funding led by Wittington Ventures.

Skeletalis, a Boston-based startup focused on treating musculoskeletal diseases, picked up an $8 million investment. Pillar VC led the round, which saw participation from KdT Ventures and others.

Lumia, a Boston-based maker of smart earrings that continuously track real-time blood flow to the head, added a $7 million investment from J2 Ventures, BonAngels Venture Partners and others.

Manta Cares, a San Francisco-based digital health platform for cancer care, launched with $5.4 million in seed funding led by Pear and Sozo Ventures.

Synthio Labs, a conversational AI platform for life sciences, was seeded with a $5 million investment. Elevation Capital led the round, which included contributions from 1984 Ventures, Peak XV Partners and others.

Cellbyte, a Germany-based startup helping pharmaceutical companies accelerate drug launches, fetched nearly $2.8 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures.

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• Death, grief and the drive to build better therapies (Life Sci VC)
   
• Many truck drivers don’t live past 61. Could digital health help? (STAT)
   
• A small Texas think tank cultivated Covid dissidents. Now they’re running U.S. health policy. (KFF Health News)
   
• We found what you’re asking ChatGPT about health. A doctor scored its answers. (Washington Post)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier, Zachary Cole and Brian Gormley. 

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc