Engrail Therapeutics closes oversubscribed $157 million Series B financing

Funding from the Series B round will propel the advancement of the company's pipeline through multiple stages of clinical development

Engrail Therapeutics, a precision neuroscience biotechnology company, on Tuesday announced the close of its oversubscribed $157 million Series B financing round.

The round was co-led by new investors F-Prime Capital, Forbion, and Norwest Venture Partners. It had participation from 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. Since its inception in 2019, Engrail has raised more than $220 million.

Engrail, which is based in the United States and has employees in India and Europe, was founded by Vikram Sudarsan and Stephen Cunningham and aims to become a neuroscience leader.

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The Series B funding will help the company in developing therapies to treat diseases with “significant unmet medical needs” including anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and rare neurodegenerative diseases, said Engrail in a statement.

“With strong financial backing from highly sophisticated and dedicated life science investors, we are well-positioned to deliver multiple value-creating milestones. We look forward to completing our ongoing ENX-102 phase 2 study in generalised anxiety disorder and advancing the rest of our pipeline into clinical development,” said Sudarsan, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Engrail Therapeutics.

Sudarsan previously worked with Cipla, one of India’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers. He was CEO of Cipla Technologies where he built a pipeline of branded products to treat central nervous system disease disorders and respiratory diseases. Before that, he was head of strategy at Cipla New Ventures. He was on the boards of Stempeutics, Chase Pharmaceuticals, Cipla Technologies, and Cipla USA.

Peter Bisgaard, chairman of Engrail’s board of directors and managing director at Pivotal Life Sciences, said: “We are proud to have started Engrail, which has progressed rapidly from an idea into a clinical-stage neuroscience company within just a few years.”