A new im­munol­o­gy biotech se­cured its first ma­jor fundraise on Wednes­day and hopes to take on the block­buster drug Xo­lair.

Poplar Ther­a­peu­tics closed a $50 mil­lion Se­ries A, it said in a press re­lease. The mon­ey will sup­port an on­go­ing Phase 1 study for its lead pro­gram, an an­ti-IgE an­ti­body called PHB-050. The com­pa­ny says it con­tains a “triple-ac­tion mech­a­nism” that tar­gets IgE cir­cu­lat­ing in the blood­stream and aims to pre­vent IgE from bind­ing to a kind of im­mune sys­tem de­fend­er called mast cells.

The biotech is led by CEO Chip Baird, who pre­vi­ous­ly ran 2sev­en­ty bio be­fore its sale last year to Bris­tol My­ers Squibb. He al­so served as CFO of blue­bird bio, which spun out as­sets to cre­ate 2sev­en­ty.

SR One, Vi­da Ven­tures and Pla­tanus led the fi­nanc­ing round.

GSK and Io­n­is Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals on Wednes­day said their an­ti­sense ther­a­py for he­pati­tis B has suc­ceed­ed in its two reg­is­tra­tional tri­als.

Al­though few de­tails were re­leased, it is pos­si­ble their ap­proach could amount to a cure for at least some he­pati­tis B pa­tients, and the part­ners are prep­ping ap­proval fil­ings.

Bepirovirsen, as the oligonu­cleotide is known, tar­gets se­quences in all he­pati­tis B virus RNA strands. It demon­strat­ed what the part­ners called a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful func­tion­al cure rate in the near-iden­ti­cal Phase 3 stud­ies, B-Well I and II.

GSK did not give fig­ures for the cure rates with bepirovirsen or for the tri­als’ place­bo con­trol. How­ev­er, it has pre­vi­ous­ly said that a 15% func­tion­al cure rate would be clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful, ac­cord­ing to a Nov. 19 Jef­feries note.

Plus, news about Monte Rosa, De­nali, Ak­tis and of­fer­ings from Prax­is and Cri­net­ics.

🫁 Bridge­Bio’s can­cer spin­out di­vulges ear­ly KRAS da­ta: Bridge­Bio On­col­o­gy Ther­a­peu­tics said that its KRAS G12C drug BBO-8520 shrank tu­mors by at least 30% in 11 of 17 pa­tients with non-small cell lung can­cer. The biotech said the ini­tial da­ta al­so sug­gest­ed its ther­a­py could be com­bined with Mer­ck’s check­point drug Keytru­da. BBOT al­so shared ear­ly find­ings on its pan-KRAS drug BBO-11818, in­clud­ing one par­tial re­sponse in a pan­cre­at­ic can­cer pa­tient, and on a drug called BBO-10203 that blocks the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween RAS and PI3Ka. BBOT said more da­ta will be shared lat­er this year on all three pro­grams. — Lei Lei Wu

Just a month af­ter strik­ing a part­ner­ship with Sanofi on an au­toim­mune dis­ease pro­gram, InduPro Ther­a­peu­tics has land­ed a sec­ond phar­ma part­ner­ship fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing can­cer drugs with Eli Lil­ly, the start­up told End­points News in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view.

InduPro was found­ed by for­mer Mer­ck sci­en­tists who in­vent­ed a new way to map pro­tein in­ter­ac­tions on the sur­face of cells, and to iden­ti­fy nov­el pro­tein tar­gets that sus­pi­cious­ly loi­ter around a pro­tein al­ready linked to dis­ease. By tar­get­ing du­os or trios of cul­pa­ble pro­teins, it hopes to cre­ate more ef­fec­tive and se­lec­tive drugs.

Eli Lil­ly will work with InduPro to make bis­pe­cif­ic and trispe­cif­ic an­ti­bod­ies for up to three clus­ters of can­cer tar­gets. InduPro will fo­cus on tar­get dis­cov­ery and ear­ly drug de­sign, and po­ten­tial­ly earn up to $950 mil­lion. The start­up, which launched in 2024 with $85 mil­lion, will al­so get an un­spec­i­fied eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment from Lil­ly.