Draig Therapeutics has gained another $65 million in venture funding that will help advance testing of a group of experimental drugs for psychiatric disorders.
The Series B round announced Tuesday was led by new investor Deep Track Capital and involved multiple other firms, among them Janus Henderson Investors and Marshall Wace. It’ll be used to push forward a pipeline of medicines designed to fix the chemical imbalances in the brains of people with major depressive disorder and other conditions. The hope is doing so will “restore the brain to a healthier state and enable patients to live their best lives,” CEO Ivana Magovčević-Liebisch said in an emailed statement to BioPharma Dive.
Based in the U.K., Draig was spun out of research at Cardiff University in Wales. It emerged from stealth last year with a $140 million Series A round and a trio of drug prospects.
In targeting psychiatric conditions, Draig is pursuing a notoriously difficult and risky area of drug research marred by a long list of clinical failures. But some recent successes have helped reignite interest, leading to some notable company acquisitions from large pharmaceutical companies and investments in younger biotechs.
Draig aims to capitalize on that momentum. Its lead candidate, DT-101, is meant to balance out the “excitatory” and “inhibitory” signals in the brain by targeting so-called AMPA receptors. These receptors are compromised in depression and are seen as a promising target for drug therapies. Draig claims its treatment could have “best-in-disease potential” against major depressive disorder and that early data have given the company “real conviction” in its promise.
A global Phase 2 study evaluating DT-101 as a monotherapy is currently underway, as is a U.S. trial testing the treatment as an add-on to other therapies, the company said. Draig has publicly disclosed two other prospects that act on GABA-A receptors, which are also well-known psychiatric drug targets. It hasn’t yet said which diseases they’ll be aimed at.
In an email, Magovčević-Liebisch said that, prior to its latest raise, Draig already had enough cash to operate through “near-term milestones,” including a Phase 2 readout of DT-101. The new cash will accelerate the progress of DT-101 and Draig’s other work, she said.
