The Longfellow Letter

Curie’s words resonate with particular force in the current biotech landscape. The path from discovery to therapeutic reality is a marathon of “many short races one after the other,” demanding not just intellectual brilliance but a profound, almost stubborn, belief in one’s vision. In a climate where capital is constrained and timelines are scrutinized more than ever, it is this fusion of perseverance and self-confidence that distinguishes the programs that advance from those that falter. It is the quality that enables leaders to stay with problems longer than anyone else, transforming 10,000 perceived failures into the one way that works.

September is a critical month for strategic planning and ecosystem engagement in Boston. We’ve curated the three essential events for your leadership team’s calendar.

Against the backdrop of a challenging funding environment—MassBio’s latest report confirms a 17.1% drop in local VC investment for the first half of 2025—several significant raises this past week offer a clear signal on what it takes to secure capital now.

Wugen Secures $115M for Off-the-Shelf CAR-T

• Summary: The St. Louis-based biotech, with a significant presence in the region, raised $115 million in a Fidelity-led round to fund its pivotal trial and pursue U.S. approval for its allogeneic CAR-T therapy for T-cell malignancies.
• The C&C Take: In a capital-constrained market, VCs are making concentrated bets on clinically validated assets. Wugen’s pivotal trial status and clear 2027 timeline for a potential FDA submission were essential for unlocking a financing of this magnitude.

Plexium Banks $60M for Protein Degrader Platform

• Summary: Protein degrader specialist Plexium raised over $60 million to fuel its pipeline, including its lead oral molecular glue candidate, PLX-4545, which recently produced positive Phase 1 data.
• The C&C Take: This raise demonstrates that a compelling modality can still attract significant capital, even after a corporate restructuring, provided the underlying science is validated by human data. The positive safety profile from the Phase 1 study was a critical de-risking event.

Arnatar Therapeutics Debuts with $52M Series A for RNA Therapies

• Summary: New clinical-stage biotech Arnatar Therapeutics emerged with a $52 million Series A to advance its pipeline of RNA-based therapies, led by an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) for the rare genetic disease Alagille syndrome.
• The C&C Take: Arnatar’s success validates the enduring power of the classic rare disease playbook for a Series A: deploy a mature modality (ASO) against a high unmet need with a clear, accelerated regulatory path (orphan and rare pediatric disease designations).

The unifying theme across these successful financings is de-risking. In today’s market, the era of raising large rounds on platform promises alone is on pause. Investors are rewarding tangible progress: late-stage clinical data, human safety signals, and clear regulatory advantages. For founders, the strategic imperative is to shift the narrative from what a platform could do to what a lead asset has done.

CRISPR-GPT and the Automation of Biological Design

A collaboration between researchers at Stanford, Princeton, UC Berkeley, and Google DeepMind has produced what may be a watershed moment for therapeutic development: CRISPR-GPT. Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the system is a large language model (LLM) designed to automate the entire workflow of a gene-editing experiment. It moves beyond simple component selection to autonomously design guide RNAs, choose optimal delivery methods, draft detailed experimental protocols, and outline data analysis plans. This represents a fundamental shift for AI in drug discovery. While tools like AlphaFold revolutionized the prediction of biological structures, CRISPR-GPT points toward the automation of biological design and execution. The long-term impact could be profound. By commoditizing the complex design phase of gene editing, it could dramatically accelerate preclinical timelines and lower the barrier to entry for sophisticated R&D. Consequently, the core defensible value for platform companies may pivot away from the novelty of the editing tool itself. The most valuable IP may no longer be the “scissors,” but rather the proprietary “envelope” used to deliver them to the right cells or the unique biological insight that identifies the right gene to target.

The modern biotech industry was born from a meeting that almost didn’t happen. In 1976, a 29-year-old venture capitalist named Robert Swanson cold-called UCSF biochemist Dr. Herbert Boyer, a pioneer in the nascent field of recombinant DNA technology. Boyer, skeptical of the commercial world, reluctantly agreed to give the young VC just ten minutes of his time. Swanson’s vision for using the technology to manufacture human proteins was so compelling that the meeting stretched from ten minutes to three hours. By its conclusion, they had agreed to found Genentech with a $1,000 investment. Their first major argument was a classic founder-VC debate: Swanson wanted to target the massive commercial market for insulin, while Boyer and his scientific colleagues argued for a simpler, faster proof-of-concept with the hormone somatostatin. They ultimately pursued somatostatin first, and its success proved the technology worked, unlocking the funding and credibility needed to develop the world’s first recombinant human insulin—and launch an industry.