Neumora Launches with $500M in Funding

Watertown biotech Neumora Therapeutics, a clinical-stage company pioneering precision medicines for brain diseases, has announced its launch. Neumora was founded as a response to the lack of targeted, effective medicines for brain diseases and the high neuroscience drug development failure rate and has raised over $500 million, including a $100 million equity investment from Amgen.

Brain diseases are highly heterogeneous and are caused by multiple, complex disease drivers. However, these diseases are currently classified as broad disorders defined by clinical symptoms rather than genetic and mechanistic subgroups. In drug development, this has led to patient heterogeneity, subjective trial endpoints and a lower likelihood of regulatory approval. Overlooking the multifaceted nature of these diseases has led to the high failure rate in developing targeted, effective medicines.

“Instead of the current broad classifications of brain diseases across a wide spectrum of generalized symptoms, Neumora’s approach is driven by an ability to develop and match the right therapeutics to the right patient populations,” said Morgan Sheng, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute. “This approach marks a major advancement in the field of neuroscience and has the potential to truly revolutionize the way we target brain diseases, similar to the way genetic sequencing and new tools have revolutionized the development of precision medicines for cancer over the past decade.”

Neumora is leveraging its data science platform and deep expertise in neuroscience drug development to advance a broad pipeline of novel product candidates that are matched to specific neuropsychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Neumora emerges with a portfolio of eight clinical, preclinical and discovery-stage programs from internal discovery efforts, the acquisitions of multiple private companies and license agreements with Amgen. (Source: Neumora Therapeutics Website, 07 October, 2021)