Dive Brief:
- Tony Coles, the former CEO of Onyx, is raising $45 million in Round A funding for his neurodegeneration-focused venture, Yumanity.
- The funding syndicate is comprised of Biogen, Sanofi-Genzyme, Fidelity Management & Research, Redmile Group, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Dolby Family Ventures.
- Yumanity currently employs 20 people.
Dive Insight:
Yumanity and its fledgling efforts in the neurodegeneration space have been closely watched by the industry. Biogen and Celgene are among the players in this space who are currently very focused on Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease drug development.
The game plan for these companies (and now for Yumanity, too) is to get in early with the goal of being part of what many analysts anticipate will be a hot, thriving, and profitable field in the next decade.
For now, however, it's all early investment with the goal of having enough room for error while driving development further along the continuum. And as has been evidenced time and time again, the neurodegeneration field can be a treacherous one for developers, with candidates which look extremely promising at first eventually falling back to earth.