A new startup has emerged with $200 million and access to multiple preclinical drug candidates from neuroscience drugmaker Denali Therapeutics.
On Wednesday morning, South San Francisco-based Tenvie Therapeutics unveiled a large launch round from ARCH Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, Mubadala Capital and other undisclosed investors.
The biotech was originally formed last March as NICO Therapeutics and is developing brain-penetrant, peripherally restricted small molecules.
As Tenvie, it is advancing a suite of preclinical programs that were formerly under the wings of Denali, a CNS drug developer with
accelerated approval hopes
in Hunter syndrome, but has experienced multiple clinical setbacks in recent years
alone
and with partners
Sanofi
,
Takeda
and
Biogen
.
Tenvie declined to disclose how much it paid for the transactions with Denali. A Denali spokesperson said the company is eligible to receive an undisclosed amount of biobucks and royalties, plus it has an equity stake in Tenvie. Its chief scientific officer Joe Lewcock is also on the Tenvie board.
An NLRP3 inhibitor and an allosteric SARM1 inhibitor are at the IND-enabling stage, the company said. Further behind, it has pipeline projects focused on TRPML1 and TMEM175.
The startup is led by former Denali SVP and head of discovery sciences Tony Estrada. He serves as president and chief scientific officer of Tenvie, which has about 35 employees so far.
“Our differentiation comes from our novel insights and identifying lipid-driven NLRP3 activation as the pathway that we see of highest pathological relevance in neurological, cardiometabolic and in ophthalmic disorders, as well as many of the peripheral disease states,” Estrada said.
Multiple biopharmas are in the NLRP3 arena, including Sanofi-backed
Ventyx
,
Novo Nordisk
,
Ventus
,
NodThera
,
BioAge Labs
and others.
Tenvie follows the blueprint of multiple other drug development startups in recent years that have carved out assets from a public biotech and carried them forward with new investors.
The company is operating without a CEO and has no near-term plans for such a post, Estrada said. Its executive chair is ARCH managing director Paul Berns, who previously led the investment firm’s “Really Big Neuroscience Company,” which became
Neumora
and went public in the fall of 2023.
Alongside Estrada in the C-suite are medical chief Tanya Fischer, who recently held the same post at Zenas BioPharma, and business and legal chief Brian Cuneo, a senior partner from ARCH.
“Very few times in your career do you get this precious gem in your hands, and I felt like it was too good of a chance to pass up,” Fischer said in an interview. “What I really like is that the molecules have a broad applicability. It’s not narrowed to one disease or disease state.”