Scoop: Moderna co-founder’s regenerative medicine biotech nabs funds, but loses Genentech

Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi is back with additional financing for a Cleveland biotech that he’s been working on since 2017, but Convelo Therapeutics is moving forward without a Big Pharma partner.

The retired Boston Children’s Hospital professor and his co-founders at Case Western Reserve University have raised nearly $11 million for Convelo in a new equity round, according to an SEC filing last week. Genentech is no longer part of the picture, though.

Rossi declined to provide any details. The biotech has not made a news announcement since signing a research collaboration with Genentech in 2019, in which the two partnered up to search for new medicines. The Roche subsidiary also had the option to fully acquire the biotech.

“While this collaboration has since ended, our teams made progress in understanding the biology of remyelination, and we are planning to publish these results in a peer-reviewed journal in the future,” a Genentech spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. “We are committed to continuing important research in the areas of remyelination and multiple sclerosis both internally and through future partnerships with companies operating in this space.”

At the time of a 2018 news release, Convelo had received $7.8 million in financing from a group of private investors, including chair Bill Sanford, to bankroll work on drug candidates out of Case Western. With an exclusive license to the Ohio university’s intellectual property related to stem cell screening systems and remyelination platforms, the startup is attempting to create new medicines for patients with neurological disorders.

Paul Tesar

Convelo means to “wrap around” in Latin, and the biotech aims to create medicines that “regenerate myelin around nerve cells.” Myelin protects nerve fibers so electrical signals can keep nerve cells in communication with each other, thereby preserving movement, reflexes and other CNS-directed functions.

The first focus is multiple sclerosis, in which a person’s immune system destroys the shield surrounding nerves. Other potential indications down the road include Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke and genetic leukodystrophies, a group of rare inherited disorders, among others, according to the drug developer’s website.

Drew Adams

The regenerative medicines startup was co-founded by Case Western professors Paul Tesar and Drew Adams. The lab is located in Cleveland’s BioEnterprise, which has helped incubate other biotechs, including gene therapy maker Abeona Therapeutics.

Aside from Moderna, Rossi is also co-founder of Intellia, Magenta and Stelexis Therapeutics, as well as an executive producer for an entertainment company with filmmaker Rob Reiner. TIME named him one of the magazine’s 100 “most influential people” in 2011 for his work as a stem cell scientist and for his development of modified-mRNA reprogramming.

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