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A sign hangs in front of the world headquarters of Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston on Oct. 23, 2019.Brian Snyder | ReutersVertex Pharmaceuticals on Tuesday said its experimental painkiller, which is being tested as an alternative to addictive opioids, significantly decreased post-surgery pain in late-stage trialsThe drug, known as VX-548, did not work better than a popular opioid, however.Still, the trial results bring the biotech company one step closer to developing a drug that can provide strong pain relief without…

“Entrepreneurs navigating the later stages of a startup face a mine field of funding options, and not all of them are suitable for their business,” writes David Spreng, founder and CEO of  Runway Growth Capital. Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members.Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to raising money, but David walks through some of the options to help you choose the right one for your…

Indian startups secured a total of $447 million in funding this week across 20 rounds, according to data provided by market intelligence firm Tracxn, a 124% surge compared to the same period last year, when startups had raised $188 million across 66 rounds. The funding was bolstered by late-stage investments in app development startup Builder.ai and Walmart-owned fintech major PhonePe.ETtechWhile Builder.ai raised $250 million from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), PhonePe picked up an…

American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced last week that it had seen encouraging clinical trial results of its new Alzheimer's medication.According to the company, their experimental drug, donanemab, was shown in a late-stage trial to slow cognitive decline by 35 percent.While these results do sound promising, the full data is not yet released, so there's still a lot we don't know.Donanemab works by targeting a common hallmark of Alzheimer's disease in the brain: amyloid plaques.Beta-amyloid is a protein which…

Late-stage deal value in the US plummeted to a 21-quarter low, hitting only $11.6 billion across 99 funds in the first quarter of 2023, according to a report from PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.Nationwide, there were an estimated 3,888 deals valued at $37 billion, down from 5,243 deals valued at $82.4 billion a year ago, according to the figures."Venture-growth deal value ticked upward in Q1 2023, influenced heavily by Stripe's $6.5-billion raise. Deal count in the growth stage hit the lowest it has been since Q3 2020,"…

Amid the ongoing funding winter, investment in Indian startups managed to cross the $1 billion dollar mark in March, on the back of late-stage funding in eyewear seller Lenskart and Walmart-owned fintech PhonePe. The total funding for startups this month stood at $1.14 billion across 102 rounds, according to data provided by market intelligence firm Tracxn. This represents a 74% slump in funding on a year-on-year basis compared to $4.48 billion raised by startups across 378 rounds in March 2022. ETtechCompared to…

Funding activity in the Indian startup ecosystem saw another muted week. A total of $87 million was raised across 12 rounds between March 18 and March 24, according to data provided by market intelligence firm Tracxn.ETtechThis represents an 86% dip in the amount of funding, compared to the same period last year, when $609 million were poured into startups.ETtechAccording to Tracxn data, no late-stage startups received funding this week, with early-stage startups picking up $68.2 million. This represented 78.5% of the…

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug from Roche Holding AG failed to significantly slow cognitive decline in long-awaited trials, the latest in a long line of setbacks for a field that has seen little progress in decades. The drug, called gantenerumab, slightly reduced cognitive decline in people with early Alzheimer’s compared with a placebo across two large and lengthy trials, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant, Roche said Monday. The trials,…

Global VC firm Accel has announced a new $4 billion later-stage fund to provide expansion capital to promising companies within its own portfolio worldwide, as well as other aspiring firms.Accel set up local teams and establish a deep presence in exciting regions such as Europe (since 2000) and India (since 2008).The VC firm has a sizable presence in India and has invested in companies like Flipkart (now Walmart-owned), Freshworks, Swiggy, Spinny, Vedantu, Zetwerk, Infra.Market, Moglix, Browserstack and others.In March…

Using machine learning, researchers have developed an algorithm that can accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease from a single MRI brain scan. The system is more accurate than any pre-existing diagnostic tool available to doctors and can also distinguish early-stage disease from more advanced stages.Currently doctors have few tools available to easily diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. Alongside cognitive tests, spinal fluid can be tested for levels of certain toxic proteins associated with Alzheimer’s and some trained experts…