Nine Square sides with ATP for $50m series A

Nine Square Therapeutics, a US-based movement disorder treatment spinout of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has emerged from stealth with a $50m series A commitment from venture firm Apple Tree Partners (ATP), its founding investor.
Nine Square Therapeutics hopes to identify small molecules that assuage movement-related symptoms of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease as well as non-degenerative indications including essential tremor and dyskinesia.
The spinout will leverage a machine learning-enabled cell profiling technology, combining advances in computational chemistry, biology and biophysics.
Nine Square’s co-founders include Matthew Jacobsen, Steven Altschuler and Lani Wu, all professors at UCSF’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, with Jacobsen also acting as chairman.
Spiros Liras, a venture partner at ATP and adjunct professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, also co-founded Nine Square Therapeutics and will serve as its interim chief executive.
Liras said: “We believe that Nine Square Therapeutics will be clearly differentiated from other companies working in movement disorders based on our deep expertise in computational chemistry and biology, the machine-learning cell imaging platforms and our experience in pursuing difficult targets with novel approaches.
“We look forward to growing our team and making important new discoveries in this underserved area.”