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.
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.”
The 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.
