New obesity biotech raises whopping $411M Series A

An obesity-focused startup unveiled this morning has raised a $411 million Series A round, the latest reflection of just how lucrative investors think the weight loss market will continue to be.

The new company, called Verdiva Bio, has a number of assets, including a once-weekly oral GLP-1 treatment and oral and subcutaneous drug candidates focused on another target called amylin.

As STAT's Andrew Joseph reports, Verdiva's Series A is one of the largest in the biotech industry in recent years, but others in the obesity medicine field have been in the same range. In October, a company called Kailera Therapeutics announced it had raised $400 million in its initial fundraising round.

RESEARCH

A new frontier in autoimmune disorders

Recent research has suggested there could be a new way to treat, and possibly resolve, lupus and other autoimmune diseases. That has set off a gold rush as drugmakers race to translate the academic discoveries into approved medicines.

Much of the research has come from a team in a Bavarian university town and, in particular, its leader, physician-scientist Georg Schett. STAT's Andrew Joseph traveled to Germany to speak with Schett, and to better understand why he and his team believe CAR-T therapy could be key to opening new possibilities for patients with autoimmune diseases.

Already a small number of patients in their trials have seen their conditions go into remission.

"When you have appendicitis, you're a patient for two weeks, and then you're not a patient anymore," Schett told Drew. "But these people are patients forever, so like if the label 'patient' appeared on their forehead. And that is not the case anymore with these few people. They are off the treatment, they are off the disease. It's, 'I had lupus, but I don't have it anymore.'"

biotech

Scribe is latest CRISPR company to lay off staff

Scribe Therapeutics is laying off just under 20% of its staff, the company told STAT yesterday. It joins a slate of CRISPR gene-editing companies to cut staff amid a prolonged downturn for the field.

Co-founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna in 2017, Scribe promised to use engineering principles and a new CRISPR enzyme, called CasX, to create better gene editors than those of other companies. It had attracted partnerships from Sanofi, Eli Lilly, and Biogen to tackle problems including high cholesterol and neurological diseases.

CEO and co-founder Benjamin Oakes said the company laid off staff as it moves toward clinical trials.

Read more from Jason Mast.

Financing

Mega-deals surged as VCs were more selective

Venture capitalists put more money in fewer companies last year, according to a new report, in a sign that they were taking a more conservative approach to funding startups.

The report, from HSBC Innovation Banking, found that VCs invested $7.7 billion in biopharma first-financing (seed or series A rounds) in 2024, more than double the amount in 2023. But the number of deals was lower than in 2023, as mega-rounds of at least $100 million accounted for 72% of all first-financing dollars.

The report noted that some of those mega-deals were with China-based assets, "either differentiated early-stage technology or less differentiated later-stage technology that have the potential to be first-in-class."

Some VCs are worried about this surge in mega-rounds. Patrick Malone, a partner at KdT Ventures, wrote in a LinkedIn post: "when large amounts of capital flow into a select few companies, there's less opportunity for truly unique, creative, or higher-risk science to get off the ground. this reduces overall innovation and impact in the ecosystem, and risks long-term pipeline stagnation, as fewer early-stage assets receive the support they need to mature."

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