Where CAR-Ts were in 2012? For­mer Tmu­ni­ty CEO Oz Azam un­veils not-quite-a-psy­che­delics biotech

In Feb­ru­ary, Oz Azam left Tmu­ni­ty months af­ter its cell ther­a­py pro­gram came to a screech­ing halt fol­low­ing two pa­tient deaths. At the time, Azam post­ed on LinkedIn that he was go­ing back to his roots in neu­ro­science, head­ing a stealth start­up.

Tues­day morn­ing, that biotech launched with a $22 mil­lion se­ries A. Its fo­cus? Psy­che­delics.

Empyre­an Neu­ro­science start­ed in the hands of Cam­bridge, UK-based plant bi­ol­o­gists and ge­neti­cists who built a ge­net­ic en­gi­neer­ing plat­form to make small mol­e­cule drugs. The biotech was “re­al­ly all home­grown. This is not an aca­d­e­m­ic sort of spin­out or any­thing like that,” Azam told End­points News.

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