US-based gene therapy developer Coda Biotherapeutics has secured $19m in a series A round that included pharmaceutical firms Novartis and Astellas, the latter through its Venture Management unit.
Healthcare investment firms MPM Capital and Versant Ventures co-led the round. Mitchell Finer, an executive partner at MPM Capital, is Coda’s co-founder and was its first CEO, before being recently replaced by Michael Narachi, ex-CEO of pharmaceutical company Orexigen Therapeutics.
Coda is making use of chemogenetics, a process where molecules are engineered to interact with newly recognised small molecules, to develop gene therapies for a range of diseases and disorders that will work by controlling the activity of cells such as neurons.
The company is initially concentrating on neurological diseases, and in particular chronic neuropathic pain, which is caused by nerve damage.
Ricardo Dolmetsch, global head of neuroscience for Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, is among Coda’s board observers, as is Astellas Venture Management’s president, Shunichiro Matsumoto.