Pharmaceutical Executive Daily: Moonwalk Biosciences' $70 Million Series B

Welcome to Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, your quick briefing on the top news shaping the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry.

In today's Pharmaceutical Executive Daily, Aptar Pharma and Aceso Therapeutics partner to advance ACT-101, an inhaled antisense therapy for cystic fibrosis, Moonwalk Biosciences closes a $70 million Series B to advance its adipose-targeted RNAi platform for obesity toward first-in-human studies, and Sebastian Arana of MilliporeSigma explains why multi-modality manufacturing flexibility costs more in complexity than in equipment.

Aptar Pharma's Nanopharm subsidiary partners with Aceso Therapeutics to advance ACT-101, an inhaled antisense oligonucleotide designed to target the underlying disease mechanisms of cystic fibrosis rather than just manage symptoms. Nanopharm will lead formulation development and device assessment work to support the program's path toward clinical evaluation, pairing Aceso's oligonucleotide platform with Aptar's inhalation delivery expertise.

Moonwalk Biosciences closes it’s $70 million Series B, co-led by Alpha Wave and YK Bioventures with participation from Eli Lilly, Gaorong Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Future Ventures, to advance its adipose-targeted RNAi platform for obesity and cardiometabolic disease. The company's siRNA therapeutics are designed to selectively hit fat tissue through non-incretin pathways, aiming to cut body weight while preserving lean muscle with dosing as infrequent as twice yearly. The funding will push lead candidate MW101 into first-in-human studies expected in late 2027 and expand Moonwalk's broader pipeline and discovery platform.

Finally, Pharmaceutical Executive speaks with Sebastian Arana, head of process solutions at MilliporeSigma, on the real cost of manufacturing flexibility. Arana argues that the true expense of multi-modality production isn't equipment but integrating different manufacturing philosophies and processes into one flexible operating model, with platform strategies and shared-utility campus facilities helping sites absorb shifts in volume across drug types. He compares today's cell and gene therapy manufacturing to monoclonal antibodies two to three decades ago, arguing the biggest opportunity lies in moving from highly manual, customized processes to ones that are scalable and reproducible.

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