Seaport Therapeutics, (“Seaport” or the “Company”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that is advancing novel neuropsychiatric medicines with a proven strategy and team, recently announced the closing of an oversubscribed $225 million Series B financing round.
According to Industry sources, this syndicate was powered by General Atlantic, a leading global growth investor, with participation from funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Foresite Capital, Invus, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, CPP Investments, and other new investors. Founding investors ARCH Venture Partners, Sofinnova Investments, Third Rock Ventures, and co-founder PureTech Health also participated.
Industry sources further added that the overall financing brings the total capital raised by Seaport to $325 million since the firm’s launch in April 2024. Seaport will utilize the proceeds to advance its clinical-stage pipeline of first and best-in-class medicines through important clinical milestones as well as further advance the capabilities of the Glyph™ technology platform, which has been displayed as a clinical proof-of-concept.
“We are grateful to have the partnership of this incredible group of new and existing investors who share our commitment to delivering better medicines for those suffering from depression, anxiety, and other neuropsychiatric disorders,” stated Daphne Zohar, Founder and CEO of Seaport Therapeutics. “Seaport is advancing novel therapeutics that have proven clinical efficacy but had previously been held back by an issue we can now address with our Glyph platform. This financing enables the important clinical work that brings us another step closer to delivering new medicines to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.”
“We are excited to partner with Daphne Zohar, Steve Paul, and the team at Seaport,” stated Brett Zbar, M.D., Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences at General Atlantic. “We are impressed with the team’s outstanding CNS clinical track record, as well as Seaport’s Glyph platform and innovative pipeline. The approach to clinical development and trial design demonstrates the deep neuropsychiatric expertise around the table, which we believe offers unique advantages that will contribute to Seaport’s success. We look forward to supporting the Company’s next phase of development.”
“The development of important new neuropsychiatric medicines is often halted due to poor drug-like properties or unacceptable tolerability, challenges that our Glyph platform can now uniquely address,” stated Steve Paul, M.D., Founder and Board Chair at Seaport Therapeutics. “For instance, xanomeline was an effective drug that faced tolerability challenges, but once resolved, led to the FDA approval of Cobenfy™ (formerly KarXT) for schizophrenia. With Glyph, we believe each of Seaport’s programs could create similar life-changing value for patients.”
Industry sources further confirmed that the programs in Seaport’s pipeline leverage the Glyph platform, which is designed to enable and boost oral bioavailability, avoid first-pass metabolism, and curb liver enzyme elevations or hepatotoxicity and other side effects to advance clinically active drugs that were previously hindered by those limitations.
The most advanced therapeutic candidate in the pipeline is SPT-300, an oral prodrug of allopregnanolone that is being advanced into a Phase 2b study for major depressive disorder with or without anxious distress that has the potential to be registration-enabling. Allopregnanolone is an endogenous neurosteroid with clinically validated rapid anti-depressant and anxiolytic activity, and SPT-300 retains this activity in an oral form.
Industry sources finally confirmed that SPT-320, a novel prodrug of agomelatine being advanced into Phase 1 studies for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), has the potential to be the first new mechanism for GAD in decades. SPT-320 uses Glyph to bypass liver first-pass metabolism and thus has the potential to lower the dose and reduce liver exposure while retaining efficacious systemic exposure of agomelatine that has been validated in multiple clinical studies in GAD.
The dose reduction has the potential to curb the requirements for liver function monitoring that has previously held back agomelatine’s development in GAD. SPT-348, a prodrug of a non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogen in development for the treatment of mood and other neuropsychiatric disorders, uses Glyph to create a potential first-in-class treatment. Beyond these programs, Seaport has multiple discovery and preclinical programs underway.
