Strand Therapeutics, a spinout from MIT, has secured $153 million in Series B funding to advance its programmable mRNA therapeutic pipeline targeting solid tumors. The company is developing mRNA-based cancer therapies that encode the immune-stimulating protein IL-12, aiming to enhance the detection and treatment of cancerous tumors. The funding round attracted backing from major pharmaceutical companies and investors, supporting further clinical development following promising Phase 1 proof-of-concept data earlier this year. Separately, biotech startup Tahoe Therapeutics raised $30 million to develop artificial intelligence models of living human cells, with plans to build the world’s largest dataset for training these models. Tahoe’s funding round was led by Amplify Partners and is part of a broader digital biology portfolio focused on integrating rigorous science with advanced computing to innovate drug development.