On February 26, 2025 Eikon Therapeutics, Inc., a pivotal-stage biotechnology company that integrates advanced engineering with cutting-edge molecular and cell biology to accelerate drug discovery and development, reported the initial closing of a $350.7 million Series D financing. Since its founding in 2019, Eikon Therapeutics has privately raised in excess of $1.1 billion to support its mission of developing new medicines to address grievous illnesses (Press release, Eikon Therapeutics, FEB 26, 2025, View Source [SID1234650654]).

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The financing round was led by Eikon’s existing investors, with participation from new investors. The investment syndicate is composed of top mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, and healthcare and technology-focused venture firms including Lux Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, AME Cloud Ventures, The Column Group, E15 VC, Foresite Capital, General Catalyst, Soros Capital, StepStone Group, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and UC Investments (Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the Regents of the University of California), among others.

"Eikon has made remarkable progress in advancing a pivotal-stage clinical pipeline and early-stage development program powered by our single-molecule tracking technology and the deep expertise of our multidisciplinary team. With clinical studies now operating in 28 countries, across 5 continents, we are accelerating the development of much-needed therapies while continuing to expand our research and development capabilities," said Roger M. Perlmutter, M.D., Ph.D., CEO and Board Chair of Eikon Therapeutics. "This financing provides the resources necessary to build a fully-integrated, 21st-century biotechnology company that leverages advanced computing, data sciences, and decades of experience in bringing innovative medicines to patients. The continued support of our world-class syndicate of investors is a testament both to the progress we have already made, and to the confidence of investors in our ability to deliver important new medicines for the world."

Eikon’s clinical portfolio is anchored by its lead program, EIK1001, a systemically administered co-agonist of toll-like receptors 7 and 8 now in a Phase III trial for advanced melanoma. EIK1001 has demonstrated both single-agent efficacy and promising in-combination activity with anti-PD-(L)1 agents across multiple tumor types. In parallel, the company is advancing EIK1003, a highly selective PARP1 inhibitor currently undergoing Phase 1 evaluation in patients with breast, ovarian, prostate, or pancreatic cancers, and EIK1004, a central nervous system-penetrant PARP1-selective inhibitor poised to initiate Phase 1 studies targeting brain cancers.

Eikon’s early-stage pipeline features, among other undisclosed candidates, two androgen receptor antagonists and an internally derived WRN inhibitor (EIK1005) that is being studied for its potential as a therapy for patients with MSI-high and other DNA repair–deficient cancers.

"Eikon has engineered a next-generation drug discovery engine that seamlessly integrates automation, high-performance computing, and advanced data science to transform how new medicines are developed," said Lux Capital Co-founder and Managing Partner Josh Wolfe. "By harnessing its proprietary single molecule tracking technology, Eikon is uncovering biological processes in living cells with an unprecedented level of precision, generating insights at a pace that was previously out of reach. With a skilled leadership team that is deeply experienced in bringing groundbreaking therapies to patients, Eikon is setting a new standard for innovation in biotechnology."

Eikon Therapeutics will participate in the upcoming TD Cowen Healthcare Conference in Boston, March 3-5, 2025.

On February 26, 2025 Arcellx, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACLX), a biotechnology company reimagining cell therapy through the development of innovative immunotherapies for patients with cancer and other incurable diseases, reported that management will participate in a fireside chat at the TD Cowen 45th Annual Health Care Conference on Wednesday, March 5, at 1:10 p.m. ET (Press release, Arcellx, FEB 26, 2025, View Source [SID1234650653]).

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A live webcast of this discussion will be accessible from Arcellx’s website at www.arcellx.com in the Investors section. A replay of the webcast will be archived and available for 30 days following the event.

On February 26, 2025 Puma Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ: PBYI), a biopharmaceutical company, reported that Alan H. Auerbach, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Founder, will provide an overview of Puma at 11:10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 5, at the TD Cowen 45th Annual Health Care Conference (Press release, Puma Biotechnology, FEB 26, 2025, View Source [SID1234650652]). The conference will be held March 3–5, 2025 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston.

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A live webcast of the presentation will be available on the Puma Biotechnology website at View Source The presentation will be archived on the website and available for replay for 30 days.

On February 26, 2025 AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV) reported that it will participate in the TD Cowen’s 45th Annual Health Care Conference on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Management will participate in a fireside chat at 8:10 a.m. Central time (Press release, AbbVie, FEB 26, 2025, View Source [SID1234650651]).

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A live audio webcast of the presentation will be accessible through AbbVie’s Investor Relations website at investors.abbvie.com. An archived edition of the session will be available later that day.

On February 26, 2025 Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq: CGEN) (TASE: CGEN) a clinical-stage cancer immunotherapy company and a pioneer in computational target discovery, reported results generated in a joint research collaboration, combining Compugen’s AI/ML powered predictive computational discovery platform, Unigen, with high throughput single cell sequencing on Ultima’s UG 100 to uncover new insights on gene structure for immuno-oncology (Press release, Compugen, FEB 26, 2025, View Source [SID1234650650]).

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"We are excited to collaborate with Ultima Genomics, a pioneer in next generation gene sequencing, to enhance our proprietary gene sequencing database, which is part of our Unigen platform," said Eran Ophir, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Compugen. "We developed algorithms to study gene splicing in single cell resolution and applied it to analyze patient tumor samples to uncover new potential regulatory mechanisms in immuno-oncology. Some of the findings were presented at the AGBT conference. Compugen plans to further harness Ultima’s technology to develop its proprietary single cell atlases for accelerated discovery of new immunotherapies."

"We are excited to support Compugen’s capabilities in predictive computational discovery of new drug targets and development of new cancer immunotherapies," said Gilad Almogy, Founder and CEO of Ultima Genomics. "We built our innovative sequencing architecture and our UG 100 sequencing platform to enable researchers to unlock new applications and insights through lower cost sequencing and more omics data. The successful outcome of our collaboration with Compugen is a great example of an application that is data-starved due to the constraints of conventional sequencing technology and can be transformed through large scale data and AI/ML techniques. Single cell sequencing is also an excellent fit for our technology which is now compatible with the leading library prep technologies."

Dr. Roy Granit, Head of Computational Discovery at Compugen is the lead author on a poster presented by Ultima Genomics at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) 2025 general meeting on February 25, 2025, in Marco Island, Florida.

Poster presentation details:

Title: Using 3′ Single Cell Sequencing to Study Patient-Derived Tumor Cells Reveals Enhanced Potential to Study Differential Splicing at the Cell Type Level
Poster number: 224
Date and time: Tuesday, February 25, 4:45 p.m. – 6:10 p.m. ET
Leading author: Roy Granit, Ph.D., Director, Head of Computational Discovery, Compugen, Israel
Presenter: Zohar Shipony, Ph.D. Ultima Genomics, United States

Key Findings:

Comparative analysis using tumor samples from cancer patients, found high consistency in single-cell expression levels across Ultima Genomics’ UG 100 and Illumina’s Novaseq 6000 sequencing platforms.
UG 100 offers clearer demarcation of 3′ mRNA transcript end and provides a unique opportunity to study gene structure, which can potentially be harnessed to better understand tumor biology and immune regulation.
Gene structure information identified in this approach is contributing to the predictive models of Unigen.
The poster is available on the publications section of Compugen’s website, www.cgen.com.

About Unigen

Compugen has been at the forefront of decoding cancer biology, with its AI/ML powered predictive computational discovery platform, recently branded as Unigen. Unigen is Compugen’s code-to-cure, flexible-loop platform for the computational prediction of novel drug target discovery and development of cancer immunotherapy. Unigen combines Compugen’s deep scientific knowledge, AI/ML predictive algorithms and a cloud-based, technology-agnostic platform integrating a variety of biological data such as multi-omics, single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial omics data. The outcomes from Compugen’s preclinical and clinical trials enrich the proprietary knowledgebase to discover additional novel drug targets and further understand complex biology. To date, Unigen has yielded multiple novel immuno-oncology drug targets, potential first- or best-in-class clinical stage immuno-oncology programs, validating partnerships with multiple pharmaceutical companies and undisclosed programs in its early-stage pipeline.