London-based life science venture capital fund 4BIO Capital led the investment. New participants in the round included Actium Group, CE Ventures, Eli Lilly, and TOHO Ventures, managed by Global Brain.
Existing backers MGB Ventures, Mission BioCapital, Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), and Syncona also took part. Alongside the fundraise, the business adopted its new trading identity as Oyster Therapeutics.
Oyster Therapeutics CEO Rob Johnson said: “This financing accelerates our progress towards the clinic and enables us to validate a new approach to targeted protein degradation, or TPD, that solves some of its major limitations through the use of smaller molecules.
“Millions of people living with diseases such as Alzheimer’s need new approaches such as TPD to address the root cause of disease. At Oyster we are defining next-generation TPD medicines that can reliably reach the brain and are orally available to better meet the needs of global patient populations.
“We welcome this support from both new and existing investors for our vision of building the world’s leading neuroscience TPD company.”
The proceeds will help advance the company’s lead programme that centres on an oral degrader directed at tau, a protein whose abnormal accumulation defines tauopathies such as Alzheimer’s disease.
This tau degrader is designed to enter the central nervous system (CNS) to eliminate pathological tau whilst preserving healthy forms of the protein.
Oyster Therapeutics selected an oral formulation to allow room-temperature storage, lower production expenses, and provide ease of administration for large patient populations.
In tandem with the programme, the company has agreed a sponsored research partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital.
The project is supervised by Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute investigator and Harvard Medical School neurology assistant professor Dr Catarina Silva.
It gives the company access to patient-derived neuronal cell lines and advanced methods for detecting neurotoxic oligomeric tau.
Additionally, the financing supports development of Oyster Therapeutics’ SELFTAC platform to generate targeted protein degraders with improved drug-like properties.