On September 24, 2026 BigHat Biosciences, a clinical-stage, AI-driven protein therapeutics platform company, reported the completion of a $75 million Series C financing, bringing its total funding raised to date to $223 million. The round was co-led by DFJ Growth & Premji Invest with participation from Catalio Capital Management, LG Technology Ventures, Sigmas Group, and existing investors including 8VC, Alexandria Venture Investments, Amgen Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Discovery Ventures, GRIDS Capital, Intermountain Ventures, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Quadrille Capital, and Section 32.

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BigHat has built an autonomous AI and experimental platform that generates proprietary, fit-for-purpose biological data at scale to drive today’s leading frontier models for therapeutic design. The financing will support continued growth of BigHat’s leading platform for rapid data generation to power frontier intelligence for protein design, as well as advancement of the company’s pipeline of AI-designed therapeutics, including BHB810 and BHB299, to key clinical readouts.

"Our mission is to design transformative therapeutics by combining frontier AI with the autonomous generation of gold-standard biological data," said Peyton Greenside, co-founder and CEO of BigHat. "This financing will help us advance both sides of that mission: our pipeline of BigHat-designed therapeutics, beginning with BHB810, one of the first AI-designed biologics to reach the clinic, and our leading platform for AI-designed biologics. We look forward to continuing to form partnerships with major technology and life sciences companies and are thrilled to partner with a group of investors who share our vision. With their support, we can continue to scale our platform and pipeline to deliver better medicines to patients more quickly."

"BigHat has uniquely enabled reinforcement learning for molecular design with a platform optimized for industry-leading speed, at the scale today’s frontier models need," said Justin Kao, Partner at DFJ Growth. "This integrated learning loop is a powerful advantage, enabling BigHat to rapidly design and optimize therapeutics with the properties needed for clinical development. The strength of the platform is reflected in both BigHat’s partnerships with pharmaceutical and tech companies and its growing pipeline of next-generation therapeutics. We’re excited to support BigHat as it scales its platform and advances these programs toward patients."

Since the company’s $80 million Series B financing in 2022, BigHat has demonstrated the versatility of its platform both within the internal BigHat pipeline and via external partnerships, and across a range of protein engineering challenges. The company has applied its integrated AI and experimental capabilities across diverse modalities, therapeutic areas and molecular design objectives while generating the gold-standard datasets needed to train and improve AI models.

Recent achievements include:

Advanced first program into the clinic: Dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 trial evaluating lead program, BHB810, a novel CDH17-directed antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) for gastric cancer and other advanced gastrointestinal tumors. BHB810 is the first clinical program from BigHat’s AI discovery platform and one of the first AI-driven biologics to reach humans.
Nominated second development candidate: Advanced BHB299, an avidity-driven T-cell engager designed to selectively target CEACAM6-expressing solid tumors, which is nearing completion of preclinical development. The company plans to begin human trials of BHB299 in 2027.
Progressed broader internal pipeline: Beyond the two lead assets, BigHat has created a proprietary preclinical pipeline of antibody therapeutics for oncology and immunology.
Achieved platform validation as partner of choice to pharma: Forged valuable collaborations with leading companies, including Amgen, Merck, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), AbbVie and Lilly. Since forming these collaborations, BigHat has announced successful completion of a strategic collaboration with J&J and three project collaborations with Merck. The company has also expanded beyond two therapeutic collaborations with Lilly by joining Lilly TuneLab to support machine learning-enabled biologics discovery.
Established frontier AI partnerships: Formed innovative partnerships with leading frontier AI companies to deploy state-of-the-art models for agentic therapeutic design.
Bolstered leadership team: Appointed Stefan Weigand, Ph.D., former Head of Large Molecule Research at Roche, as Chief Scientific Officer in June 2026, and John Corbin, Ph.D., former Chief Technology Officer at Tizona Therapeutics, as Chief Development Officer in June 2023, strengthening the company’s multidisciplinary team with experience spanning machine learning and AI, synthetic biology, protein engineering, automation, drug discovery and therapeutic development.
Raised additional funds: Closed a $44 million Series B extension in 2025, led by pharma and strategic investors.
"Biologics rarely fail in the clinic because they cannot bind a target; they fail because they lack the properties that turn a promising binder into an actual medicine. Peyton and the team built BigHat to engineer those properties in from the earliest stages of design, to address the hardest problems in the field, and the result is a clinical-stage pipeline and a data advantage that compounds with every program," said Marc Martin Casas, Vice President of Biotech and Healthcare at Premji Invest. "At Premji Invest, we partner with teams that think big and have the discipline to build enduring companies, and BigHat is exactly that. We are proud to co-lead this financing and to support the team as they bring transformative medicines to patients."

(Press release, BigHat Biosciences, SEP 24, 2026, View Source [SID1234671062])

On September 24, 2026 Elephas Biosciences Corporation, developer of a functional precision medicine platform for oncology therapy response measurement, reported a collaboration with Italy-based Tes Pharma to evaluate TES-4207, a first-in-class investigational therapy targeting NR2F6 for treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Through the collaboration, Elephas’ elive platform will characterize functional response to TES-4207 in live human NSCLC tumor tissue, as a monotherapy and in combination therapy.

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As Tes Pharma integrates the ex vivo elive platform with their TES-4207 small molecule program, researchers will use functional data from live human NSCLC tumor tissue to characterize response phenotypes and inform continued translational and clinical development. The data will provide additional functional insights to support ongoing evaluation and development of the molecule.

"As we continue advancing TES-4207, understanding functional response in live human tumor tissue provides an important layer of information to support our first-in-class development program," shared Francesco Greco, Project Leader at Tes Pharma. "The insights generated through this collaboration will help us better understand the potential of TES-4207, alone and in combination with other therapies, as we determine the best path forward."

Elephas’ elive platform keeps tumor tissue alive and preserves the native tumor microenvironment, measuring therapeutic response directly rather than inferring it. For pharma partners, this generates functional human response data that can inform mechanism of action, combination therapy evaluation, and responder and non-responder profiling as programs move through translational and clinical development.

"We are pleased to collaborate with Tes Pharma and apply our elive platform to the development of TES-4207," shared Erika von Euw, PhD, MBA, Vice President, Scientific Affairs at Elephas. "Evaluating TES-4207 directly in live tumor tissue, both as a monotherapy and in combination with PD-1 blockade, allows us to capture tissue-specific functional responses while preserving the complexity of the tumor microenvironment. These insights can help inform clinical development and support a more precise approach to identifying groups most likely to benefit."

(Press release, Tes Pharma, SEP 24, 2026, View Source [SID1234671061])

On September 24, 2026 Sanyou Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. ("Sanyou Bio") and NovoCodex Biopharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. ("NovoCodex") reported that the two companies have formally entered into a strategic collaboration agreement. The partnership will focus on the joint development of innovative antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), leveraging Sanyou Bio’s strengths in innovative ADC discovery powered by its AI-Super trillion antibody/molecule libraries (AI-STAL) and Sanyou AI-Drug Accelerator (SAI-DA), together with NovoCodex’s extensive expertise in site-specific conjugation technology using unnatural amino acids. Through this collaboration, the two companies will jointly advance the development of innovative ADC therapeutics and work to deliver therapies with greater clinical value to cancer patients worldwide.

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The core competitiveness of ADC therapeutics begins with the precision of antibody targeting and is realized through stable and controllable conjugation processes. NovoCodex’s proprietary site-specific conjugation technology platform, NovoCode, precisely incorporates unnatural amino acids into antibodies to achieve defined and controllable conjugation sites, ensuring a highly homogeneous ADC product rather than the heterogeneous mixtures generated by traditional random conjugation approaches. This technology has been validated in the pivotal Phase III clinical trial of ARX788, and has supported ARX305 in demonstrating a favorable safety window and durable antitumor activity in patients with advanced renal cancer with high CD70 expression.

Sanyou Bio’s innovative ADC discovery platform was established in 2020 and has extensive experience in project design and process development, having successfully delivered more than 800 ADC conjugation projects. Particularly in the development of novel ADC molecular formats, Sanyou Bio has established capabilities in the discovery and design of dual-target ADCs and dual-payload ADCs. Dual-target ADCs enhance tumor selectivity by targeting two distinct antigen epitopes, while dual-payload ADCs expand the therapeutic window and help overcome drug resistance by incorporating two payloads with different mechanisms of action. These two innovative molecular formats are particularly well suited to have their design potential fully unlocked through NovoCodex’s NovoCode platform.

The two companies’ synergistic exploration in this area is expected to open up new technological possibilities for the development of next-generation ADC therapeutics.

The strategic collaboration will focus on the following key areas:

Integration of Antibody Discovery and Site-Specific Conjugation:
Sanyou Bio will leverage the AI-STAL platform to screen antibody candidates with high internalization efficiency and high target specificity, while NovoCodex will use the NovoCode platform to develop site-specific conjugation processes, establishing a coordinated evaluation of antibody characteristics and conjugation strategies from the outset.

Joint Exploration of Dual-Target and Dual-Payload ADCs:
Combining Sanyou Bio’s molecular design capabilities with NovoCodex’s site-specific conjugation platform, the two companies will advance the evaluation of target combinations for dual-target ADCs, the screening of payload pairs for dual-payload ADCs, and preclinical proof-of-concept studies.

Building a Closed-Loop R&D Workflow:
The two companies will establish joint project teams to integrate the entire development process, from target research and antibody screening through conjugation process development and in vitro and in vivo evaluation, thereby accelerating the development of ADC candidates.
Dr. Xuejun Liang, Chairman and CEO of NovoCodex, said:
"The success of an ADC therapeutic depends, to a significant extent, on the degree of compatibility between the antibody molecule and the conjugation strategy. Sanyou Bio’s AI-STAL and SAI-DA platforms can rapidly identify high-quality antibody candidates from massive molecular libraries, providing critical support for us to move upstream from process development toward the molecular design stage. At the same time, Sanyou Bio’s capabilities in dual-target ADCs and dual-payload ADCs represent major directions in the development of innovative ADCs today. Through this collaboration, we look forward to jointly developing innovative ADC therapeutics with a wider safety window and more durable efficacy."

Dr. Guojun Lang, Founder and CEO of Sanyou Bio, said:
"NovoCodex’s site-specific conjugation technology based on unnatural amino acids has been extensively validated in clinical development. NovoCodex’s unnatural amino acid-based site-specific conjugation platform, NovoCode, offers the key advantages of precise control over conjugation sites and a high degree of molecular homogeneity. The value of this collaboration lies in enabling Sanyou Bio’s molecular discovery capabilities and innovative ADC R&D capabilities to directly serve an ADC technology platform already validated in clinical development. This means that we can rapidly translate the value of dual-payload ADC engineering into therapeutic candidates within a more predictable conjugation system. It represents an efficient integration of ‘innovation at the source’ and ‘process validation,’ and we look forward to the opportunities this collaboration will bring."

This strategic partnership marks a key milestone for Sanyou as it deepens industry-wide collaboration across the ADC landscape. Drawing on each party’s complementary strengths in novel ADC development, Sanyou Bio and NovoCodex aim to streamline development of next-generation ADCs and build source-level innovation advantages for ADC drug discovery.

(Press release, Sanyou Biopharmaceuticals, SEP 24, 2026, View Source;sanyou-bio-and-novocodex-partner-to-co-develop-innovative-dual-payload-adcs-302888906.html [SID1234671060])

On September 24, 2026 Amberstone Biosciences, Inc., a preclinical-stage oncology company developing pH-gated, tumor-activated T-cell engagers (TCEs), reported a collaboration and license agreement with Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc., a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company (2696.HK). Under the agreement, Amberstone will work with Henlius to apply its proprietary T-MATE (Tumor Microenvironment Activated ThErapeutics) platform technology to generate preclinical candidates against up to two targets selected by Henlius. Henlius will lead subsequent research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization activities worldwide.

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T-cell engagers redirect a patient’s T cells to kill cancer cells, but their development in solid tumors has been constrained by cytokine release syndrome and on-target, off-tumor toxicity. T-MATE is designed to address these limitations through reversible pH gating, reducing T-cell activation in the circulation and healthy tissues while retaining therapeutic activity across a broad range of pH conditions found in solid tumors. Preclinical studies have shown potent tumor-cell killing under tumor-like pH conditions with markedly reduced activity at physiological pH. Amberstone’s self-developed lead T-MATE TCE asset is expected to enter clinical development in the first half of 2027.

Under the agreement, Amberstone will receive an upfront payment and research funding, and is eligible to receive up to US$440 million in potential development, regulatory, and sales milestones for each target, plus tiered royalties on net sales.

(Press release, Amberstone Biosciences, SEP 24, 2026, View Source [SID1234671059])

On September 24, 2026 Earendil Labs, an AI-powered biotechnology company advancing next-generation biologics, reported a research collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to discover and develop multiple therapeutic bispecific antibody programs in oncology.

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Under the collaboration, Earendil Labs will lead antibody discovery and research through the early clinical development stage for antibody programs directed to certain pre-agreed target combinations. Genentech will assume responsibility for subsequent global clinical development and commercialization of such antibody programs arising from the collaboration. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

As part of the agreement:

Earendil Labs will receive a $55 million upfront payment
The total potential value of the collaboration, including upfront, development, regulatory and sales milestone payments, is in excess of $1.5 billion.
Earendil Labs is also eligible to receive tiered royalties on net product sales.
Jian Peng, PhD, CEO of Earendil Labs, said: "Genentech is a pioneer in defining modern biologics cancer medicine. Earendil Labs is building an AI-driven high-throughput biology platform that effectively integrates AI directly into biologics research and development—from predictive protein modeling and generative protein design to rapid experimental validation. By combining our platform with Genentech’s deep expertise in oncology drug development, we aim to accelerate the creation of differentiated bispecific antibodies and translate them into new medicines."

Zhenping Zhu, MD, PhD, President & co-CEO of Earendil Labs, added: "Despite many major advances in targeted cancer therapies and immunotherapies, there still exists a significant unmet medical need as many cancer patients develop drug resistance or relapse. Tumor growth and metastasis depend on multiple and interactive biological pathways, making it especially challenging for therapies directed at a single mechanism to achieve durable benefit. Bispecific antibodies offer the potential to address complementary disease biology within a single medicine. Through this strategic collaboration, we strive to discover and advance meaningful new treatment options for patients expeditiously."

"Bispecific antibodies have reframed how we approach treatment precision in oncology," said Boris L. Zaïtra, Head of Roche Corporate Business Development. "In cancers where patients face high relapse rates and limited options, bispecific antibodies support our commitment to delivering innovative, targeted therapies. Partnering with companies such as Earendil Labs allows us to push the boundaries of scientific innovation to meet patients’ critical unmet needs in oncology."

(Press release, Earendil Labs, SEP 24, 2026, View Source [SID1234671058])