Some bat­tle test­ed neu­ro­science vets are go­ing all out on ear­ly on­set de­men­tia — with a $44M launch round to build the team

Ger­hard Koenig

Any­one who spe­cial­izes in neu­ro­sciences R&D has to pre­pare them­selves for some frus­tra­tion along the way. And the team at Arku­da Ther­a­peu­tics can tell you all about it.

The CEO and co-founder is Ger­hard Koenig, who you may re­call head­ed up the team at Quar­tet Med­i­cines, which worked on neu­ronal and in­flam­ma­to­ry cells, un­til they fold­ed the shop af­ter run­ning in­to a blind al­ley. Be­fore that, he was CSO at Fo­rum, which Deb­o­rah Dun­sire — now CEO at Lund­beck — had helmed as it tried to break new ground in Alzheimer’s and schiz­o­phre­nia.

It didn’t work out ei­ther.

But even though At­las closed the check­book on Quar­tet, Bruce Booth nev­er blamed the crew. You want to try some­thing cut­ting edge here, you pay your mon­ey and you take your chances. And some­times you write off your loss­es.

That’s biotech.

So now Koenig and some of the ex­ecs he’s known along the way are back, knock­ing the door on a new ap­proach to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, an­oth­er high-risk, high-re­ward play where they are look­ing to break new ground. And Booth has been bankrolling the in­cu­ba­tor work in hopes of see­ing a new ven­ture fly.

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