Engrail raises $157 million in funding for anxiety meds sans the side effects

livemint.com:

Cipla executive Vikram Sudarsan, will now invest the capital to support its product pipeline for neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. This marks one of the largest early-stage funding rounds of a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company. The round was co-led by new investors F-Prime Capital, Forbion, and Norwest Venture Partners.

Other investors include Eight Roads Ventures, RiverVest Venture Partners, Red Tree Venture Capital, funds managed by abrdn Inc., Ysios Capital, Longwood Fund, and existing founding investor Pivotal Life Sciences, the company said. The company did not disclose the stake diluted by co-founders and existing investors. But there was significant investor interest, evident from the fact that the company stepped out to raise $100 million in its Series B round of funding and ended up with a lot more than that, as per Sudarsan, who is also the CEO of Engrail Therapeutics.

With this, the company has raised over $220 million so far since it was founded in 2019 by Sudarsan and Stephen Cunningham. Engrail is developing therapies for the treatment of disorders including anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and rare neurodegenerative diseases. It currently has a pipeline of four key products under development, Sudarsan said.

Its primary product is a highly selective drug for generalized anxiety disorder that targets specific channels in the neural network without having side effects that benzodiapines have, like addiction potential, cognitive impairment and sedation. The drug is currently under phase-2 clinical trials and is still a long time away from commercial launch. “The drug is quite a few years from the market.