Undecimal Bio launches with 18 million dollars. Undecimal Bio, a spin-out from Eleven Therapeutics based in Cambridge, England and Tel Aviv, announced an oversubscribed 18 million dollar seed financing on October 13, co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital, with Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entree Capital, Kerna Ventures and Saras Capital participating. Its DELiveri platform screens large combinatorial libraries of conjugates and uses AI analysis to find molecules that carry siRNA into specific cell types beyond the liver, the delivery bottleneck the company calls the liver trap. The first programs target renovascular diseases, and the team is based at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. The gap check had flagged this item as single-sourced from Endpoints News; the company’s own Business Wire release corroborates the round, its leads and the platform description, so it ships here at grade B rather than capped at C.
Caribou winds down its CAR-T programs. Caribou Biosciences announced on October 6, not this week, that its board had approved a review of strategic alternatives, with Wedbush Securities as exclusive financial adviser, and that it will discontinue its two allogeneic CAR-T programs, vispa-cel in B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and CB-011 in multiple myeloma, alongside a substantial workforce reduction mostly in the fourth quarter. A regulatory filing put restructuring costs at 15 million to 19 million dollars, and the company held 113.8 million dollars in cash, equivalents and marketable securities at June 30. Genetic Engineering News’s StockWatch column revisited the plunge in the shares on October 12. There is no new development beyond that October 6 announcement, so it is recorded here rather than as a fresh story.
Lilly escalates against black-market retatrutide. PharmaVoice reported on October 12 that medical spas, online sellers and wellness clinics are marketing products purporting to contain retatrutide, Lilly’s triple-agonist obesity drug, which remains in Phase 3 and has not been approved by any regulator, making consumer sales illegal under federal law. Lilly has filed successive waves of lawsuits against US sellers, referred more than 200 individuals and entities to the FDA, the Department of Justice, state attorneys general and licensing boards, and flagged more than 14,000 websites, advertisements and listings across more than 100 countries. In a Phase 3 extension study, participants with a body mass index of at least 35 lost an average of 30.3 percent of body weight after 104 weeks on the highest dose, which is the demand signal the illicit market is trading on. Lilly plans an FDA submission in the first quarter of 2027 on PharmaVoice’s reporting; other trade coverage has described a submission by the end of 2026, and the company has not reconciled the two in the sources reviewed.
ArkBio clears a Phase 2 influenza trial. Shanghai-based ArkBio said on October 13 that the FDA has cleared its investigational new drug application for AK0406, a long-acting antiviral drug-Fc conjugate, allowing a Phase 2 trial for influenza prevention in the general US population. Phase 1 dosing in Australia was completed in July 2026. The company cites CDC figures of at least 32 million illnesses, 380,000 hospitalizations and 24,000 deaths in the 2025 to 2026 US influenza season as the unmet-need case for a preventive option beyond vaccination.