UPMC Enterprises has contributed to a $20m series B extension for Cerevance, which is commercialising Rockefeller University research.
Cerevance, a US-based brain disease treatment company based on Rockefeller University research, yesterday increased its series B round to $65m following a $20m extension featuring UPMC Enterprises, the commercialisation arm of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Dolby Family Ventures, Foresite Capital and Casdin Capital also backed the extension.
The extension comes three months after an initial $45m series B tranche backed by GV and Takeda Ventures, corporate venturing subsidiaries of internet and technology group Alphabet, and pharmaceutical firm Takeda.
Foresite Capital, Lightstone Ventures and Dementia Discovery Fund, a strategic investment fund backed by several drug developers, also contributed to the first tranche, as did philanthropic investor Bill Gates.
Founded in 2016, Cerevance is progressing medical treatments for central nervous system (CNS) diseases identified using a discovery platform called NetsSeq that holds clinical annotations for more than 8,000 human brain tissues samples.
Cerevance’s lead program, CVN424, entered phase 2 trials for Parkinson’s disease in late 2019.
The money has been allocated to early-stage drug programs for CNS indications such as Alzheimer’s disease, leveraging NetsSeq to home in on specific varieties of affected neuronal and non-neuronal cells.
Matthias Kleinz, vice-president of translational programs at UPMC Enterprises, will be joining the board of directors following the series B extension.
NetsSeq was co-invented by Nat Heintz, a researcher at Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry and Gaseous Ion Chemistry, and Xiao Xu, a member of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Ceverance also has a founding connection to Takeda through chief scientific officer Mark Carlton, who helped set up the startup after almost 10 years at the corporate’s drug discovery lab in Cambridge, England, where Ceverance maintains a research presence.
The company has now raised $106m in combined equity and grant financing.
Dementia Discovery Fund invested $5m in 2017 to bring Ceverance’s series A round to a $26.5m close. Lightstone had led a $21.5m first tranche in 2016, with participation from Takeda.
