Pulmocide joins trio of start-ups with venture raises

Adding to the more than $22 billion in venture money raised by biotechs this year, three early-stage start-ups — Entact Bio, Infinimmune and Vega — announced financings Tuesday. Joining them with financing news was late-stage U.K. biotech Pulmocide Ltd., which extended its series C round to support its respiratory asset in pivotal testing.  

The biggest financing came from Entact Bio Inc., which debuted with $81 million in a series A round led by Qiming Venture Partners USA and venBio Partners. Led by CEO Victoria Richon, the Watertown, Mass.-based company has a platform, Encompass, for developing enhancement-targeting chimeric molecules (ENTACs). Entact uses Encompass to identify diseases amenable to intervention with ENTACs, select deubiquitinases to address a specific target and create ENTACs optimized for specific target-DUB pairs. ...