Psychoactives Biotech Startup Gets $30M Series A Financing For Novel Drug Discovery Engine

Psychedelics startups are being increasingly funded by private placements these days. This time, the biotech company led by expert researchers, clinicians and drug developers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Sensorium Therapeutics, has closed a $30 million Series A financing round to advance its initial compound SENS-01 together with its Biodynamic Discovery Platform (BDP.) 

The funding round was led by healthcare and life sciences investment firm Santé Ventures, while Route 66 Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, WPSS.bio, Palo Santo, Iter Investments, Ocama Partners and re.Mind Capital participated as well.

Sensorium’s co-founder and CEO Dick Simon says that in order to address the current mental health crisis it is necessary to urgently broaden access to safe and effective treatments by leveraging the knowledge of what has worked in human populations for centuries.

"The complexity of the challenge requires clinical, scientific, and technical expertise. Sensorium's multidisciplinary team embodies a wealth of industry and academic experience with a passion and track record for impact," Simon added.

On behalf of Santé Ventures, the VC fund’s founding managing director Kevin Lalande commented: "Sensorium's transformational technology and experienced research team has the potential to revolutionize neuropsychiatric therapy by developing multiple new classes of novel therapeutics. We are thrilled to support the Sensorium team on their mission to forge these new treatment pathways and deliver new medicines to the many patients struggling with urgent mental health needs."

Sensorium’s focus is set on leveraging medicinal chemistry, neuroscience and machine learning toward the development of psychoactive medicines for mental health. The company’s newly-developed drug discovery engine is designed to rapidly identify, synthesize and enhance targeted molecules as novel therapeutics. 

The Biodynamic Discovery Platform (BDP) feeds data outputs from its natural product library and precise characterization into machine-learning algorithms. By prioritizing mechanisms with proven efficacy in human brains, the platform is set to help Sensorium deliver modern therapeutics in a faster manner and with improved efficacy and tolerability, fewer side effects, and decreased dependence potential.

Specifically, its initial asset SENS-01 has shown promise as a fast-acting and well-tolerated therapy for patients with anxiety and depression. The company expects to begin IND-enabling studies on this drug in 2023, and commence clinical trials by early 2024.

Sensorium’s scientific co-founders Dr. Jerry Rosenbaum, Dr. Jacob Hooker and Dr. Stephen Haggarty believe that the company’s predictive knowledge network of psychoactive molecules will help identify structure-activity relationships and act as a base for developing new, nature-based medicines with optimized therapeutic benefit. 

Haggarty further explained: "Humans have consumed psychoactive molecules for centuries, yet how they function has remained a challenge to understand. Our approach marries deep knowledge of the chemical space with a platform that interrogates drug function on neuronal plasticity and other indicators to generate potential drug candidates."

Or, as Hooker concluded, “Nature has provided the template, and we know we can do it better."