Nov. 8 Quick Takes: McKinsey under House investigation 

McKinsey & Co. did not respond to an inquiry about the U.S. House Oversight Committee’s launch of an investigation into its practices and possible conflicts of interest related to the life sciences industry. The committee expressed concern over the consultancy’s advice to AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) concerning competition for Humira adalimumab and its recommendations to Purdue Pharma L.P. about OxyContin, as well as potential conflicts regarding its advisory role with FDA. The committee will also investigate McKinsey’s internal hedge fund.

DeepCure Inc. announced a $40 million series A round led by Morningside Ventures, with participation from existing investors TLV Partners, Sapir Venture Partners and Benon Group Ltd. The round brings the Boston-based company’s total funds raised to $47 million, and will enable it to develop its automated robotic wet lab technology, launch two new sites in Greece and Israel, and advance the first of its five AI-discovered oncology candidates to IND. DeepCure’s molecular database covers over 1 trillion compounds, and its generative models can expand each molecule to a million analogs, for a total search space of 1 quintillion (10¹⁸) molecules, enabling targeting of difficult-to-drug protein-protein interactions and polypharmacology...