Newleos Therapeutics has closed an oversubscribed Series A financing round, raising $93.5m to revolutionise neuropsychiatric disorder treatments with new medicines.
Goldman Sachs Alternatives spearheaded the funding round which also saw contributions from Longwood Fund, Novo Holdings, Arkin Bio Ventures and DCVC Bio.
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Newleos in-licensed its clinical-stage pipeline from Roche, which comprises several oral small molecules with new mechanisms targeting a range of conditions such as generalised anxiety, social anxiety, cognitive impairment and substance use disorders.
The company made an upfront payment and will provide success-based milestones and royalties in exchange for global rights to the clinical-stage assets.
Newleos founding CEO and Longwood Fund executive partner David Donabedian stated: “Anxiety and substance use disorders represent some of the most prevalent neuropsychiatric indications with high unmet need, representing more than 25% of mental illnesses in US adults and impacting 60 million individuals.
“With a seasoned founding team that has extensive company creation and central nervous system drug development experience, Newleos will use this capital to conduct proof-of-concept clinical trials across our programmes.”
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By GlobalDataThe company’s leading clinical programme, NTX-1955, is a gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA)-γ1 selective positive allosteric modulator (PAM) designed to treat anxiety disorders with a unique mechanism of action that avoids the side effects of current treatments.
This targeted approach could minimise anxiety while avoiding other brain networks that carry safety risks.
NTX-1955 has already undergone a non-clinical package and Phase I trials, which included single and multiple ascending dose studies, drug-drug interactions and receptor occupancy studies.
The therapy is safe, well-tolerated, brain-penetrant and selective to GABAA-γ1.
Newleos is planning to further investigate the candidate in proof-of-concept clinical trials for generalised anxiety disorder.
Newleos has several other clinical-stage assets: NTX-1472, NTX-2001 and NTX-1511, which target V1a, TAAR1, and GABAA-α5 receptors respectively.
