NCBiotech News

Precision BioSciences has the need for speed.

Less than a month after the Durham-based clinical-stage gene editing company announced plans to look for strategic partners for its cell therapy assets, Precision has found one. It has reached a deal – potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars – with Imugene Limited for the global rights to its lead allogeneic CAR T candidate, Azercabtagene Zapreleucel (azer-cel).

Due to the continuing opioid epidemic, health care providers are often hesitant to prescribe opioid medications such as morphine, especially at high doses. This has left some patients with few options for treating severe pain.

“Even though pain relief is a multibillion-dollar industry, there haven’t been a lot of new pain medicines developed that aren't some kind of opioid derivative,” said Kori Brewer, Ph.D., professor at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine. “And for some patients, even opioids don’t provide relief.” 

It’s often said that success doesn’t happen overnight.

Consider Durham-based anti-infectives startup ValanBio Therapeutics. The journey that led to the development of its new synthetic antibiotic technology – LPC-233 – began about 40 years ago. And it isn’t over yet.

Durham health technology startup Clinetic has secured a Series A round of financing that the company said would accelerate its work in clinical trials technology and patient recruitment.

Sopris Capital, a Colorado-based venture capital firm with investments in health tech, led the round, announced Tuesday. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized Chapel Hill-based Cessation Therapeutics to begin a clinical trial on CSX-1004. The monoclonal antibody is designed to prevent fentanyl overdoses. The FDA’s action paves the way for the company to conduct its first clinical trials on humans. 

The mood was upbeat as North Carolina Department of Commerce Secretary Machelle Baker Sanders opened the state’s First in Talent Townhall on July 27, just two weeks after CNBC named the Tar Heel State the country’s top state for business—for the second year in a row. Sanders also serves on the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s Board of Directors. 

BioSkryb Genomics, a Durham developer of amplification tools for single-cell analysis, has signed an agreement with a Dutch company to expand distribution of BioSkryb’s genomic and multiomic technology in Europe.

At the age of 17, Jakobi Blue-Smith of Raleigh, NC, already had an idea what she wanted to study in college. After she told her internship counselor at Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy about her interests, it wasn’t long before she applied for an internship through OpenDoors Summer Internship (ODSI) program.

“I told my counselor the field I was interested in was biotechnology incorporated with research, and she found exactly what I was looking for,” said Blue-Smith. “I immediately applied for it.”

Kincell Bio, a new company formed to develop and manufacture cell therapies for biotechnology companies, may be based in Florida, but it has North Carolina fingerprints all over it. 

Kincell, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), was spun out of Inceptor Bio of Morrisville and has raised $36 million in Series A venture capital led by Raleigh-based Kineticos Ventures. 

A combination of economic development projects in multiple sectors – life sciences, electric vehicles, semiconductors, and even retail – helped land North Carolina the sole top spot in the latest issue of Area Development, a quarterly publication covering site selection, facility planning and economic development.

For the second consecutive year, North Carolina has been named by CNBC as “America’s Top State for Business.” 

“At a time when companies are clamoring for workers while trying to navigate a treacherous economy, no state is meeting their needs more effectively than North Carolina,” writes CNBC Special Correspondent Scott Cohn, who created the business news network’s annual competitiveness study of states in 2007.

“Business and the economy in the state have been on a tear since the pandemic, and the state has scarcely looked back,” he adds.

This week leaders in the life sciences are gathering in Raleigh for US Biostimulants Summit 2023. The event will concentrate on the biostimulant industry’s focus on increasing crop yields and protecting plant growth.

The small team at Raleigh-based startup, Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, spends the bulk of its time looking for safe and effective molecules that can be developed into drugs to treat rare and infectious diseases.

Opus Genetics, a Research Triangle Park drug development startup focused on inherited diseases of the retina, has raised an additional $4.5 million in funding from investors.

Cereius, Inc., a biotechnology company developing therapies to treat cancer that has spread to the brain, has been acquired by San Diego-based Solve Therapeutics, Inc. (SolveTx).