Seaport Therapeutics—a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company advancing novel neuropsychiatric medicines with a proven strategy and team—announced the closing of an oversubscribed $225 million Series B financing round. General Atlantic, a leading global growth investor, led this syndicate, with participation from funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Foresite Capital, Invus, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, CPP Investments, and other new investors. Founding investors ARCH Venture Partners, Sofinnova Investments, Third Rock Ventures, and co-founder PureTech Health also joined.
This financing brings Seaport’s total capital raised to $325 million since the company’s launch in April 2024. Seaport will use the proceeds to advance its clinical-stage pipeline of medicines through important clinical milestones and further advance the capabilities of the Glyph technology platform, which has demonstrated clinical proof-of-concept.
The programs in Seaport’s pipeline use the Glyph platform – which was designed to enable and enhance oral bioavailability, avoid first-pass metabolism and reduce liver enzyme elevations or hepatotoxicity and other side effects to advance clinically active drugs that were previously hindered by those limitations. The most advanced therapeutic candidate in the pipeline is SPT-300, an oral prodrug of allopregnanolone that is being advanced into a Phase 2b study for major depressive disorder with or without anxious distress that has the potential to be registration-enabling. Allopregnanolone is an endogenous neurosteroid with clinically validated rapid anti-depressant and anxiolytic activity, and SPT-300 retains this activity in an oral form.
SPT-320 – a novel prodrug of agomelatine being advanced into Phase 1 studies for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) – has the potential to be the first new mechanism for GAD in decades. And SPT-320 utilizes Glyph to bypass liver first-pass metabolism and thus has the potential to lower the dose and reduce liver exposure while retaining efficacious systemic exposure of agomelatine that has been validated in multiple clinical studies in GAD. The reduction in dose has the potential to eliminate the need for liver function monitoring that has previously held back agomelatine’s development in GAD. SPT-348, a prodrug of a non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogen in development for the treatment of mood and other neuropsychiatric disorders, uses Glyph to create a potential first-in-class treatment. Beyond these programs, Seaport has multiple discovery and preclinical programs underway.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are grateful to have the partnership of this incredible group of new and existing investors who share our commitment of delivering better medicines for those suffering from depression, anxiety and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Seaport is advancing novel therapeutics that have proven clinical efficacy but had previously been held back by an issue we can now address with our Glyph platform. This financing enables the important clinical work that brings us another step closer to delivering new medicines to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.”
-Daphne Zohar, Founder and CEO of Seaport Therapeutics
“We are excited to partner with Daphne Zohar, Steve Paul and the team at Seaport. We are impressed with the team’s outstanding CNS clinical track record, as well as Seaport’s Glyph platform and innovative pipeline. The approach to clinical development and trial design demonstrates the deep neuropsychiatric expertise around the table, which we believe offers unique advantages that will contribute to Seaport’s success. We look forward to supporting the company’s next phase of development.”
-Brett Zbar, M.D., Managing Director and Global Head of Life Sciences at General Atlantic
“The development of important new neuropsychiatric medicines is often halted due to poor drug-like properties or unacceptable tolerability, challenges that our Glyph platform can now uniquely address. For instance, xanomeline was an effective drug that faced tolerability challenges, but once resolved, led to the FDA approval of Cobenfy (formerly KarXT) for schizophrenia. With Glyph, we believe each of Seaport’s programs could create similar life-changing value for patients.”
-Steve Paul, M.D., Founder and Board Chair at Seaport Therapeutics
