June 9 Quick Takes: Venture rounds for Tessa, Degron, Ancora, Charm and Relation

A new $126 million series A round will recapitalize Singapore-based Tessa Therapeutics Ltd. as it advances a pipeline of cell therapies, including one headed into a pivotal study. Polaris Partners led the round alongside prior investors Temasek, EDBI, Heliconia Capital and Heritas Capital. The biotech had raised at least $130 million during 2017-18, but has shifted focus to its current programs. They include autologous CD30-targeting CAR T therapy TT11, which has led to responses in a Phase II trial, and allogeneic therapy TT11X, which is in Phase I testing and uses the company’s virus specific T-cells augmented with a CD30-targeting CAR.

Degron Therapeutics Inc. raised a $22 million series A round to advance its GlueXplorer targeted protein degradation platform, developed in the ShanghaiTech University lab of co-founder Yong Cang. The Shanghai- and San Diego-based company has developed 6,000 compounds with over 60 diverse cores based on a patented scaffold — almost of all of which bind to the E3 ubiquitin ligase cereblon — and has three undisclosed programs in lead optimization for cancer and inflammatory diseases. The A round was led by Med-Fine Capital, with participation from Dyee Capital, Baidu Venture and NeuX Capital, along with seed investors CO-WIN Ventures and Yuanbio Venture Capital...