Aspen Neuroscience Raises $147.5M in Series B
San Diego-based Aspen Neuroscience, Inc. announced a Series B financing round of $147.5 million on May 9 to further advance its treatment of Parkinson’s disease using autologous stem cell therapies. Alphabet Inc. venture arm GV, LYFE Capital and Revelation Partners co-led the investment round with participation from additional new investors Newton Investment Management, Singapore-based global investor EDBI, LifeForce Capital, Medical Excellence Capital Partners, Mirae Asset Capital, NS Investment and others. Doug FisherPartnerRevelation Partners
As part of the financing, Doug Fisher of Revelation Partners will join the board of directors. “I’m very excited to be joining the Aspen Neurosciences board,” Fisher said. “I have followed this research for more than 10 years and am looking forward to being a part of bringing it to patients.”
The raise also included significant investments from Aspen’s Series A and seed investment teams including OrbiMed, ARCH Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, Section32 and Alexandria Venture Investments. Faheem HasnainChairmanAspen Neuroscience
“In these difficult economic times, it speaks volumes that Aspen was able to raise a meaningful amount of capital. I think it also continues to highlight the tremendous innovation coming out of the San Diego biotechnology sector,” said Faheem Hasnain, Aspen Neuroscience chairman. Aspen has raised more than $220 million since the company’s founding in 2018. Damien McDevitt, Ph.D.President and CEOAspen Neuroscience
“As the leader in autologous cell therapy development, Aspen Neuroscience is preparing to study its first cell replacement candidate in Parkinson’s disease,” said Aspen President and CEO Damien McDevitt, Ph.D. “This company was founded by a visionary team of scientists and patient advocates, who envisioned a day when personalized cell replacement could be used to target neurodegenerative diseases.”  
Climbing Science of Stem Cells
Aspen Neuroscience was founded by a team that came out of the Scripps Research Institute. The Parkinson’s project was inspired by patients of the disease who had heard of early studies into stem cell therapies and knew of its potential promise as a treatment. Angelyn LoweVice President, Corporate AffairsAspen Neuroscience
“There’s a very long history of proof-of-concept of this, so there were patients that raised money by climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. They called themselves Summit For Stem Cell and they helped spin off the research group into a nonprofit and then to help incorporate it. So that’s how we started,” explained Angelyn Lowe, Aspen vice president of corporate affairs. With the support of those early advocates and initial seed investor, Aspen has emerged as the leading company developing a personalized cell replacement for Parkinson’s using a patient’s own cells. Developed from a simple skin biopsy, each patient’s stem cell-derived dopamine neurons will be evaluated for potential effectiveness using proprietary AI-based genomics tools, before being transplanted for clinical use. “What we’re doing through a surgical procedure – actually a very elegant solution – is taking a patient’s skin cells, converting them to a stem cell that is essentially the same as an embryonic stem cell and then we reprogram the stem cell into dopamine neurons and then we transplant them into the brain where we hope they persist and graph and express dopamine,” Lowe said, adding that Aspen hopes the procedure will eventually allow Parkinson’s patients to go off of go off the current treatment of immunosuppressive therapy. The stem cell process has already shown success in mice and a six-year study on non-human primates and “the results were astonishing,” Lowe added. To date, Aspen has performed in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrating that the protocol reliably produces dopamine-releasing neurons when examined both physiologically and functionally. “We combine stem cell biology with innovative AI/bioinformatic and manufacturing tools to develop patient-specific approaches,” McDevitt said. “To that end, the Series B financing will also support our R&D pipeline, which includes autologous gene-corrected cells and programs that explore the treatment of other neurological diseases.”
The Series B funding will support the planned studies of the company’s lead product candidate for Parkinson’s disease, ANPD001, including its patient Screening Cohort study and the upcoming Phase 1/2a clinical trial, post-IND submission to FDA. Aspen has completed all its pre-clinical studies and screening for the study has already begun. Aspen was given permission be FDA to begin screening before filing its IND, which the company hopes to do within the next 12 months. Over the last year, Aspen has grown its team from 25 to 60 employees, adding experts in the fields of regulatory compliance, quality control and manufacturing as the company prepares to manufacture its stem cells “in-house.”
“We decided about a year ago we’re going to control our own destiny,” Lowe added. Aspen Neuroscience, Inc.

Aspen Neuroscience Raises $147.5M in Series B

[Amend] Statement of acquisition of beneficial ownership by individuals – Form SC 13G/A

Damien McDevitt, PhD, president and CEO of Aspen Neuroscience, Inc.Aspen Neuroscience, Inc., a San Diego, CA-based private biotechnology company developing autologous cell therapies, including the first iPSC-derived autologous neuron replacement treatment for Parkinsonâ€™s disease (PD), closed its $147.5m Series B funding round.GV, LYFE Capital and Revelation Partners co-led the round with participation from additional new investors Newton Investment Management, Singapore-based global investor EDBI, LifeForce Capital, Medical Excellence Capital Partners, Mirae Asset Capital, NS Investment and others.The raise included investments from Series A/Seed investment teams including OrbiMed, ARCH Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, Section32 and Alexandria Venture Investments.Aspen Neuroscience is a development stage, private biotechnology company focused on personalized (autologous) cell therapies.An iPSC platform company, Aspen combines stem cell biology with the latest artificial intelligence and genomic approaches to investigate patient-specific, restorative treatments. Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated & summarized by a computer program and has not been created by StartupAround.

Aspen Neuroscience Raises $147.5M in Series B Financing

People Moves Monday – A busy week for the buy-side
The past week saw appointments from Millennium, Newton Investment Management, FactSet, Bank of America, Babel Finance and Capitolis. Winner of The TRADE’s Trader of the Year (Long only) award 2021 and former director of equities trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at BlackRock, Laimonas Staskus, has departed after seven years at the firm. He joined hedge fund, Millennium, in February in an index rebalancing role. Prior to BlackRock, Staskus also served at Barclays Capital as an assistant vice president for Japan and Asian equities trading and two years in a Japan equities trading role at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets. Sources familiar with the matter informed The TRADE that Newton Investment Management has appointed buy-side veteran, Jason Reeve, in an unconfirmed title. Reeve joins Newton Investment Management from Sloane Robinson, where he spent 21 and a half years as a partner and head of trading. The appointment marks the second major buy-side move in the last weeks, following Millennium’s appointment of Staskus. In an effort to aid the expansion of its ecosystem, FactSet has appointed Joel Kornblum to work with its partnerships and alliances team. Joining FactSet from BNY Mellon, Kornblum brings a wealth of experience across the end-to-end investment operational process to the role: including experience in investment data management, performance measurement and investment accounting. Bank of America has appointed Robert Mackenzie Smith as vice president of electronic trading and market structure for its fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) business. Smith joins Bank of America from Bloomberg, where he spent the last 10 months as a senior research analyst for financial market structure, based in New York. Adding to the ongoing trend which has seen numerous senior figures entering the crypto space from the conventional markets, crypto financial services provider Babel Finance has appointed Yang Song as head of treasury. Song joins from Commerzbank, where he spent 12 years, most recently as vice president of treasury. The newly created treasury role is designed to help the company expand the scope of its services to more diverse client groups. Following a successful $110 million Series D funding round, foreign exchange novation platform provider, Capitolis, confirmed that it has expanded its employee base by 50% compared to the same period last year. Capitolis has welcomed a number of major strategic recruits and notable promotions across its New York and Tel Aviv offices as part of its expansion. Among the additions, Lindsey Baptise was promoted to chief financial officer. Meanwhile, Leon Leviner joined the company as head of FX engineering, responsible for the delivery of the FX compression products. Elsewhere, Ben Townson joined the product team as vice president, head of product management for compression; Milos Marinkovic joins as vice president, engineering; Sofiane Nait-Saidi joined the Capitolis capital labs team as vice president, quantitative strategy; and finally, Stephen Fanale joined as algorithm team lead.

People Moves Monday – A busy week for the buy-side

The Trade
Former Sloane Robinson trading head to join Newton Investment Management
Trading head joins investment manager after previously spending over two decades with hedge fund, The TRADE can reveal. Former head trader at shuttered London hedge fund Sloane Robinson has joined Newton Investment Management, sources familiar with the matter have told The TRADE. Buy-side veteran Jason Reeve joins Newton in an unconfirmed title after previously spending 21 and a half years as a partner and head of trading at Sloane Robinson. The hedge fund shuttering at the end of 2020 after seeing a rapid decline in assets under management exacerbated by the pandemic and a subsequent dramatic slowdown in emerging market economies. Newton Investment Management had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publishing. Prior to joining Sloane Robinson, Reeve also spent over a decade at Nomura Asset Management as a trader. It’s the second major buy-side move in the last few weeks after it was confirmed that BlackRock’s director of EMEA equity trading at left in February to join hedge fund Millennium in an index rebalancing role.

Former Sloane Robinson trading head to join Newton Investment Management

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First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Board Seats	Type	Location
10/20/2021	10/20/2021	Penn National Gaming	1 Acq - P2P		Corporation	Pennsylvania
00/00/0000	00/00/0000	Score Media	Subscribe to see more		Corporation	Canada

First funding	10/20/2021	00/00/0000
Last Funding	10/20/2021	00/00/0000
Investor	Penn National Gaming	Score Media
Rounds	1 Acq - P2P	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Corporation	Corporation
Location	Pennsylvania	Canada

Date	Round	Company	Amount	New?	Co-Investors	Sources
5/9/2022	Series B	Aspen Neuroscience	$147.5M	Yes	Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, EDBI, Frazier Lifesciences, GV Investments, Lifeforce Capital, LYFE Capital, Medical Excellence Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, NS Investment, OrbiMed Advisors, Revelation Partners, Section 32, and Undisclosed Investors	4
3/10/2022	Series E	Subscribe to see more	$99M	Subscribe to see more	Subscribe to see more	10

Date	5/9/2022	3/10/2022
Round	Series B	Series E
Company	Aspen Neuroscience	Subscribe to see more
Amount	$147.5M	$99M
New?	Yes	Subscribe to see more
Co-Investors	Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, EDBI, Frazier Lifesciences, GV Investments, Lifeforce Capital, LYFE Capital, Medical Excellence Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, NS Investment, OrbiMed Advisors, Revelation Partners, Section 32, and Undisclosed Investors	Subscribe to see more
Sources	4	10

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