Nereid Therapeutics, a Boston, MA-based company dedicated to discovering new disease treatments by applying research and technologies in biomolecular condensates, raised $50m in Series A funding.
Apple Tree Partners (ATP), a life sciences venture firm, created Nereid with Clifford P. Brangwynne, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and made the founding investment.
Nereid Therapeutics is discovering new disease treatments using proprietary technologies for generating, visualizing, and measuring liquid-liquid phase separation and the resulting biomolecular condensates.
Brangwynne, a biophysicist, is a pioneer of the field of biomolecular condensates—work for which he has won numerous awards, including a 2018 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant. He has discovered and elucidated the biophysical principles underlying how liquid-liquid phase separation drives the organization, material properties, function, and dysfunction of these ubiquitous structures in living cells. The Nereid drug discovery platform builds from a set of proprietary technologies, developed in the Brangwynne Lab at Princeton, that utilize advanced microscopy and computer vision to enable the precise measurement, interrogation, and control of phase separation in living mammalian cells. The company’s near-term efforts will focus on certain cancers and neurodegenerative disorders in which pathological protein behaviors are governed or influenced by phase transitions.
Nereid is led by Spiros Liras, Ph.D., a venture partner at ATP, who will be Nereid’s interim CEO. The Board of Directors chaired by Seth Harrison, M.D., ATP’s founder and managing partner, includes ATP venture partner and Chief Scientific Officer Michael Ehlers, M.D., Ph.D.; Liras; and Robert J. Hugin, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Celgene Corporation. Brangwynne will maintain a Board observer seat and will chair Nereid’s Scientific Advisory Board.
FinSMEs
16/11/2020