JUPITER, FL – Envoy Therapeutics, a recently founded company focused on new treatments for neuological and psychiatric diseases, has raised an $8 million first round led by 5AM Ventures with Takea Research Investment and Roche Venture Fund participating.
Envoy says it will focus on discovering and developing new treatments to benefit patients suffering from neurological and psychiatric diseases.
The company’s proprietary technology was developed by Envoy’s scientific founders at The Rockefeller University who include Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Nathaniel Heintz, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate and National Academy of Sciences member Paul Greengard, Ph.D., and National Academy of Sciences member and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Jeffrey Friedman, M.D., Ph.D.
With the proceeds from this equity financing, we expect to demonstrate the power of our technology by delivering successful results in a select number of partnerships with global pharmaceutical companies and building our own portfolio of new drugs that may help millions of people,” said Brad Margus, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Envoy.
“Envoy has the unique ability to identify all of the proteins expressed in a specific cell type in complex tissues, whether in response to genetic alterations, disease, or pharmaceutical perturbations – this is a true breakthrough company,” added John Diekman, PhD, Managing Partner of 5AM Ventures and Chairman of Envoy’s Board of Directors.
“We look forward to helping Envoy build a portfolio of therapeutic compounds in areas with critical unmet need.”
Envoy says its mission is to discover new drugs with superior efficacy and fewer side effects than existing treatments. The company’s bacTRAP technology enables the identification of proteins that are produced in vivo by specific cell types without requiring the isolation of those cells.
The technology, the company says, is especially powerful in tissues of the brain, where many hundreds of cell types are intermingled.
Therapeutically modulating the activity of a specific cell type has until now been prevented by the inability to determine which proteins are uniquely expressed by that cell type, Envoy says.
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