Leen Kawas, the start­up founder and CEO who unit­ed in­vestors be­hind a dark­horse ap­proach to treat­ing Alzheimer’s be­fore re­sign­ing last year in a da­ta ma­nip­u­la­tion scan­dal, is back.

Kawas and bil­lion­aire pri­vate eq­ui­ty in­vestor Richard Kayne an­nounced on Fri­day the launch of Pro­pel Bio, a new in­vest­ment firm fo­cused on “com­pa­nies at var­i­ous stages across the life sci­ence space.”

The pair of­fered few oth­er de­tails about the new firm, and a spokesper­son said that nei­ther would speak on the record or com­ment be­yond the re­lease “to com­ply with SEC reg­u­la­tions.” An SEC fil­ing Fri­day in­di­cat­ed the com­pa­ny planned to raise $150 mil­lion, but did not list any funds raised to date.

Un­til last Oc­to­ber, Kawas had been CEO of Athi­ra Phar­ma. She found­ed the com­pa­ny while a post­doc at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty, promis­ing to spin out work the lab was do­ing on a method to ac­ti­vate the growth of synaps­es in the brain and po­ten­tial­ly slow or re­verse neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. Af­ter toil­ing in ob­scu­ri­ty for years, in­vestors gave the com­pa­ny an $85 mil­lion Se­ries B in 2020, in­trigued by ear­ly hu­man da­ta and search­ing for al­ter­na­tives af­ter the fail­ure of more pop­u­lar ap­proach­es to Alzheimer’s.

Kayne, who found­ed the as­set man­age­ment firm Kayne An­der­son, in­vest­ed in that Se­ries B. He al­so in­vest­ed in a $15.2 mil­lion Se­ries A in 2017. Forbes lists his net worth at $1.6 bil­lion.

Last June, how­ev­er, Athi­ra abrupt­ly an­nounced that Kawas was be­ing placed on tem­po­rary leave “pend­ing a re­view of ac­tions stem­ming from doc­tor­al re­search Dr. Kawas con­duct­ed while at Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty.” In the days pri­or, al­le­ga­tions had ap­peared on pub­peer, a mes­sage board for sci­en­tists to dis­cuss peer-re­viewed pa­pers, that Kawas had ma­nip­u­lat­ed im­ages in ear­ly pub­li­ca­tions.

In Oc­to­ber, Athi­ra an­nounced it con­clud­ed Kawas ma­nip­u­lat­ed im­ages in her doc­tor­al the­sis and four oth­er pa­pers foun­da­tion­al to the es­tab­lish­ment of the com­pa­ny. Kawas re­signed, while new CEO Mark Lit­ton ar­gued the com­pa­ny re­mained on sol­id foot­ing, point­ing to dif­fer­ences be­tween the founder’s ear­ly work and Athi­ra’s cur­rent strat­e­gy.

Kawas has yet to com­ment pub­licly on the al­le­ga­tions.

She will serve as a gen­er­al man­ag­ing part­ner at Pro­pel, with Kayne as a gen­er­al part­ner. The on­ly oth­er em­ploy­ee list­ed is se­nior as­so­ciate Da­som (Chris­tine) Yoo, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er at Fred Hutch. They al­so an­nounced a board of eight long­time biotech ex­ec­u­tives.

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.

Today, we’re opening nominations for our fifth annual Women in Biopharma R&D special report.

Over the last four years, we’ve honored 80 women whose extraordinary accomplishments have changed the game in biopharma R&D. We’re looking for big thinkers, scientists, executives and other enterprising women who are breaking barriers in drug development and inspiring the next generation of leaders.