Tenvie takes off with $200M, assets and exec from Denali

Tenvie takes off with $200M, assets and exec from Denali

Tenvie Therapeutics has unveiled with $200 million and the goal of transforming the neurological treatment landscape, nabbing several programs—and an executive—from Denali Therapeutics.

The initial funding was led by Arch Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital and Mubadala Capital with participation from other unnamed investors, according to a Jan. 8 release. Tenvie did not specify what classification—i.e., seed or series A—the financing is. 

The South San Francisco-based biotech houses several small-molecule assets, some of which were acquired from Denali, another South San Francisco-based company that just announced a phase 2/3 miss in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis earlier this week. The asset had targeted the protein complex eIF2B, with AbbVie and Calico’s joint elF2B candidate also missing its main endpoint in a separate phase 2/3 trial. 

Tenvie didn’t indicate the specific assets it would be scooping from Denali, a biotech that focuses on neurodegenerative and lysosomal storage diseases.

The new company did say the financing will be used to progress multiple assets into the clinic. Currently, the biotech’s most advanced candidates—an NLRP3 inhibitor and an allosteric SARM1 inhibitor—are in the investigational new drug-enabling stage. The NLRP3 inflammasome has been tied to Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, among others, while the SARM1 enzyme is known to play a role in peripheral neuropathies and neurodegenerative conditions.

Tenvie’s peripherally restricted small molecules are designed to penetrate the brain and tackle three disease drivers: inflammation, metabolic dysfunction and lysosomal function. The biotech’s pipeline also includes cardiometabolic and eye disease programs, according to the release.

“Tenvie was founded to fundamentally alter the treatment paradigm for neurological diseases and profoundly impact the lives of patients, their families and caregivers,” Tenvie Chief Scientific Officer and President Tony Estrada, Ph.D., said in the release. “Our team’s validated approach uniquely allows us to access the brain while enabling the parallel development of precision-designed peripherally-restricted small molecules to address a broad array of diseases.”

Estrada previously served as Denali’s senior vice president and head of discovery sciences, a role he held for nearly nine years. 

Beyond Estrada, Tenvie’s team includes Tanya Fischer, M.D., Ph.D., who serves as chief medical officer, and Brian Cuneo as the biotech’s chief business and legal officer. 

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