March 10 Quick Takes: Scenic heads to clinic with $31M series A

Scenic Biotech BV plans to move the lead immune-oncology candidate that emerged from its genetic modifier target discovery platform into the clinic after closing a $31 million series A round co-led by Eir Ventures, BioMed Partners and Vesalius Biocapital. With the funding, Scenic will also advance three rare disease programs for Neimann Pick Type C, Barth syndrome and an undisclosed metabolic syndrome, each based on druggable genetic modifiers, toward IND-enabling studies. Existing investors Inkef Capital, BioGeneration Ventures and Oxford Science Enterprises, plus Scenic’s founders and management, also participated in the round. Stephan Christgau of Eir Ventures, Michael Wacker of BioMedPartners and Stephane Verdood of Vesalius will join Scenic’s board.

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) is readying an sNDA submission to expand the use of Qulipta atogepant to include prevention of chronic migraine after the oral CGRP antagonist reduced mean monthly migraine days compared with placebo in a Phase III trial of 778 patients. Qulipta was FDA-approved to prevent episodic migraine last September. AbbVie acquired the drug as part of its 2020 acquisition of Allergan Inc., which obtained a license to it from Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) in 2015. Merck designed atogepant to avoid the liver toxicity associated with telcagepant, an earlier CGRP antagonist, which the pharma discontinued in 2011. ...