Financing roundup: Electra’s Star debut, Kallyope’s cash, Memo’s money & more

It’s President’s Day, so do you know which U.S. presidents are on which dollar bills? The runup to the holiday saw many life science companies raising cash for research and development, adding plenty of Benjamins (not a president) to their coffers.

The rounds of financing included companies emerging from stealth as well as clinical-stage biotechs returning to investors for larger rounds of financing. Here’s a look back at some of the financing activity for the past week.

Electra Therapeutics, the first company formed by rare diseases startup creator Star Therapeutics, closed an $84 million Series B round to continue clinical development of an antibody for a rare autoimmune disorder that has no FDA-approved treatments. Star Therapeutics is already backed by its own $100 million in financing, which it also disclosed last week.
South San Francisco-based Walking Fish Therapeutics expanded its Series A round to $73 million. Walking Fish, which is engineering B cells to proteins, had previously closed that round at $50 million when the biotech launched last September.
SpliceBio raised €50 million to develop its gene therapy for a rare eye disorder using technology that enables the delivery of larger genetic payloads to target tissue. The Barcelona-based company said its Series A financing is the largest for a Spanish biotech.
London-based Centauri Therapeutics unveiled a £24 million Series A round, which it will apply toward the development of antibacterial drug candidates for difficult-to-treat infections.
Memo Therapeutics closed a Series B round that raised 37 million Swiss francs. The Switzerland-based biotech plans to use the cash for Phase 2 testing of an antibody for BK virus, which poses an infection risk to transplant patients.
Allergy and inflammation biotech Third Harmonic Bio emerged from stealth with a $105 million Series B financing to continue clinical development of an oral small molecule drug to treat cold-inducible urticaria, a rare autoimmune skin disease.
Renibus Therapeutics raised $35M in Series A financing to continue clinical development of its drug pipeline oriented around acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease.
Denmark-based NMD Pharma closed a €35 million financing to support mid-stage clinical tests of NMD670, a small molecule in development for treating the neuromuscular disorder myasthenia gravis.
Kallyope, a New York-based company developing therapies that target the gut-brain axis, closed a $236 million Series D financing to support new programs in type 2 diabetes, obesity, and gastrointestinal barrier diseases.
Another New York biotech, ProJenX, launched with $5.1 million in seed financing for brain-penetrating drugs that could treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other brain disorders.
Synthego, a company that develops and markets products pharma and biotech companies use for CRISPR research, closed a $200 million Series E financing led by Perceptive Advisors. The Redwood City, California-based company said it will use the capital to expand the capacity and capabilities of two platform technologies for R&D applications.