Cerevance, a Boston, MA-based drug discovery and development startup working to come up with novel therapeutics drug to treat the disease of the central nervous system (CNS), raised $51 million as an expansion of its Series B funding round.
Several investors supported the most recent expansion round, including Gates Frontier, Dementia Discovery Fund, Foresite Capital, GV (Google Ventures), Lightstone Ventures, Takeda Ventures, UPMC Enterprises, and Dolby Family Ventures.
The private clinical stage drug-making company uses its nuclear Enriched Transcript Sort sequencing (NETSseq) tool to treat CNS illnesses. The most recent injection raises the Series B financing’s overall amount to $116 million.
“We are thrilled to secure additional funding from world-class investors who strongly support the need for novel therapies to treat neurological diseases,” said Craig Thompson, chief executive officer of Cerevance.
According to a press release from the firm, the additional money will support planned clinical trials focusing on schizophrenia, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease.
“We are well positioned to continue to advance our clinical and preclinical programs and proprietary NETSseq platform. With this financing, we expect to reach several key clinical milestones across multiple disease areas with unmet needs,” added Craig Thompson.
Cerevance is developing targeted treatments for patients with neurodegenerative diseases
Private pharmaceutical business Cerevance focuses on CNS illnesses. The primary drug of Cerevance, CVN424, is an oral, non-dopaminergic molecule that acts on a unique target (GPR6). In Phase 2 research involving 135 Parkinson’s disease patients, the compound showed considerable and clinically significant efficacy.
The business finds highly selectively expressed, novel target proteins that are either specific to particular brain circuits or are over- or under-expressed in sick brains using its proprietary Nuclear Enriched Transcript Sort sequencing (NETSseq) platform.
Cerevance is developing a strong pipeline of targeted treatments for patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s. This pipeline is being advanced through partnerships with over 25 brain banks and the evaluation of an expanding gathering of more than 12,000 human post-mortem brain tissue samples.
Using its patented NETSseq technology, the startup is now developing various clinical and preclinical initiatives to identify and evaluate novel treatment targets in some of the most challenging neurological illnesses.
Moreover, Cerevance and Merck, also known as MSD outside of the US and Canada, have a multi-year strategic research partnership to find new Alzheimer’s disease targets using the NETSseq platform.
As part of the partnership, Cerevance out-licensed one program to Merck in the discovery stage. Also, Cerevance and Takeda are collaborating on research to find new target proteins expressed in the CNS and create new treatments for specific Gastrointestinal illnesses.
