Cerevance has expanded its Series B funding round with an additional close of $51 million, bringing the total to $116 million.
The financing will support upcoming clinical trials focused on Parkinson’s disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and schizophrenia.
“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. “We are well positioned to continue to advance our clinical and pre-clinical programs and proprietary NETSseq platform. With this financing, we expect to reach several key clinical milestones across multiple disease areas with unmet needs.”
Cerevance has a growing pipeline of clinical and preclinical programs developed using the company’s NETSseq platform to discover and validate novel therapeutic targets in some of the most challenging neurological diseases.
CVN424, a first-in-class, oral, GPR6 inverse agonist demonstrated safety and efficacy as an adjunctive therapy with levodopa in patients with Parkinson’s disease in a Phase II study.
The company plans to initiate a Phase II proof of concept study assessing CVN424 as a monotherapy treatment in patients with newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease not yet treated with levodopa in Q2 2023.
This year, Cerevance also hopes to initiate a Phase II study evaluating CVN766 as a potential treatment for schizophrenia and a Phase I study assessing KCNK13 blocker CVN293 in ALS.
The company also has research collaborations with Merck, to identify novel targets for Alzheimer’s disease, and Takeda, focusing on new therapies for GI disorders.