Ceres Brain Therapeutics

Ceres Brain Therapeutics

Biotech, Pharma

Series A – $20M to be raised

Created in 2019

6-10 employees

Rescuing neurons to treat brain diseases

Ceres Brain Therapeutics is a biotechnology company advancing CBT101, a novel central nervous system (CNS) therapeutic candidate that has recently progressed into Phase 2 clinical development. CBT101 is positioned to address major unmet needs in severe neurological diseases through a differentiated, indication specific approach to neuronal energy dysfunction.

CBT101 is being developed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rapidly progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease with limited treatment options, as well as in creatine transporter deficiency (CTD), a rare paediatric neurological disorder with no effective disease modifying therapies. While based on a single molecular entity, CBT101 applies distinct mechanistic rationales aligned with each indication: targeting neuronal and mitochondrial energy dysfunction in ALS, and restoring intracellular creatine availability in neurons in CTD.

The program is supported by robust non clinical data and early clinical evidence demonstrating central nervous system activity and target engagement in humans. CBT101 is delivered as a non invasive nasal spray, offering a clear advantage in terms of patient convenience and treatment burden compared with injectable or hospital based therapies.

To support ongoing Phase 2 development and pipeline expansion, Ceres Brain Therapeutics is currently seeking to raise USD 20 million and is actively exploring strategic partnership opportunities, including co‑development, licensing, and regional collaborations, to accelerate development and maximize the value of CBT101 across its neurological indications.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Thomas Joudinaud

CEO

Paris, France

thomas.joudinaud@ceres-brain.com

LinkedIn

Diva Expertise

Diva Expertise

CRO/CDMO

Created in 2015

6-10 employees

The expert of studies and supply in human adipose tissue

DIVA Expertise is the leading global scientific partner for companies in the health, nutraceuticals and cosmetics industries seeking to evaluate the efficacy of an active ingredient or product directly on human adipose and skin tissue, ex vivo and in vitro. DIVA Expertise offers turnkey R&D projects – using unique, scientifically validated predictive human biological models – to provide industrial players with robust mechanistic evidence that accelerates and ensures the safe market launch of their innovations in cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and pharma metabolism/obesity.

What sets DIVA apart: DIVA biobank offering and innovative in vitro and ex vivo models enable preclinical expertise that closely aligns with the physiology of human adipose tissue, by working with real human biological materials from donors and adhering to the 3Rs principle (reduction of animal testing).

CONTACT INFORMATION

Sandra Robelet

Business Developer

Marseille, France

sandra.robelet@diva-expertise.com

LinkedIn

DeepLife

DeepLife

TechBio

Series A – $19M raised

Created in 2019

21-50 employees

Digital Twin of Cells for Drug Discovery

DeepLife is a techbio company advancing drug positioning through artificial intelligence and digital twins of human cell types.

Its platform, TwinCell, simulates cell-type-specific behaviour by integrating over 1 billion harmonized single-cell omics data points with causal AI, enabling more precise target identification, drug repositioning and disease understanding.

DeepLife applies this technology across autoimmune, neurodegenerative and cardio metabolic diseases among others. It partners with pharmaceutical and biotech companies on asset de-risking, indication expansion and disease relevant assessment. The company has established strategic collaborations including with Biersdorf in skin disease and aging.

DeepLife leverages cell-type-specific digital twin models to pinpoint the most relevant disease indications for any therapeutic compound. At the core is TwinCell – a large-scale causal model of cell biology that identifies the molecular drivers of disease and how to reverse them. TwinCell combines this insight with large scale single cell multi omics data to build precise models of human cell types and their regulatory networks.

These digital twins replicate real cellular behaviour, predicting preclinical outcomes and enabling researchers to explore disease mechanisms in silico. This approach uncovers how compounds act at the cell-type level, enhancing target validation, biomarker discovery and indication selection.

Applied across the drug development lifecycle, TwinCell accelerates decision making, reduces risk and improves translational relevance. It supports novel target discovery, asset de-risking, indication expansion and pipeline prioritization through strategic collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech partners.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Jonathan Baptista

CEO & Co-founder

Paris, France

jonathan.baptista@deeplife.co

LinkedIn

INPART

INPART

Institution & Others

$71.3M raised

Created in 2010

51-200 employees including 6-10 in North America

One platform to help bring science to life

Inpart, the platform purpose-built for biopharma partnering and external innovation.

Trusted by 500+ organizations across the life sciences ecosystem, including 70% of the world’s top 50 pharmaceutical companies. Inpart helps life science teams discover and evaluate external innovation more effectively.

Through a global scientific discovery network spanning 3,000+ research institutions and 6,000+ emerging biotech companies, they proactively surface new partnering opportunities aligned with our clients’ scientific priorities.

Inpart’s AI-enabled platform then supports the full partnering lifecycle; helping BD, R&D, Alliance Management and leadership teams structure evaluation workflows, collaborate across teams, and capture critical decision insights. By transforming fragmented evaluation data into structured intelligence, organizations gain better visibility across their external pipeline and unlock the foundation for AI-driven insight.

Deal is Inpart’s industry-leading partnering intelligence platform that helps BD, R&D, Alliance Management and leadership teams structure the evaluation and management of external opportunities across the partnering life-cycle. The platform captures scientific and commercial evaluation data, enables efficient collaboration across teams, and creates a clear history of partnering evaluations and decisions.

By transforming fragmented opportunity data into structured intelligence, Deal unlocks AI-driven insights that help organizations surface patterns across evaluations, identify strategic gaps, and generate portfolio-level visibility, enabling leadership teams to answer critical partnering questions in minutes and make faster, more reliable decisions.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Alex Barker

President, Pharma & Na

Toronto, ON, Canada

alex.barker@inpart.io

LinkedIn

AgenT

AgenT

TechBio, Medtech

Series A – $10M to be raised

Created in 2018

6-10 employees

Detect Alzheimer’s early, when it could be prevented

AgenT is a precision diagnostics company dedicated to transforming the prediction and monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases, with an initial focus on Alzheimer’s disease. Built on more than a decade of research, AgenT has developed a strong scientific and technological foundation combining patented biomarkers, proprietary targeted mass spectrometry methods, and AI-based software. This approach enables the company to generate highly specific, clinically relevant insights from blood samples and to address a major unmet need in brain health: earlier, more scalable, and less invasive detection.

AgenT’s proprietary platform is designed to monitor key biological pathways involved in age-related diseases and to support multiple applications ranging from diagnostics and companion diagnostics to therapeutic target discovery. The company also benefits from a unique proprietary database built from more than 5,000 retrospective plasma samples collected across the US, Europe, and Australia, enriched with longitudinal clinical follow-up data. Through this integrated platform and data strategy, AgenT is positioning itself as a next-generation player in precision medicine for neurodegenerative diseases, with a clear path toward clinical validation, commercial deployment, and strategic partnerships in both healthcare and life sciences.

AgenT’s innovative solutions are built around HORIZON™, a proprietary multiomic platform designed to predict and monitor neurodegenerative diseases through a simple blood sample. HORIZON™ combines patented biomarkers, targeted mass spectrometry, and AI-based software, and can monitor 8 key biological pathways through 85 biomarkers. Its first applications, B-HEALED™ and B-AHEAD™, are blood-based tests designed to predict progression to Alzheimer’s dementia symptoms in cognitively unimpaired and impaired individuals. These products have already shown strong performance in a first multicenter retrospective study involving 632 individuals across the US, Europe, and Australia, with 3x fewer false positives than current tests on the market. AgenT is now advancing these solutions through an ongoing 4,200-participant pivotal clinical validation study.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Baptiste Billoir

Co-founder

Paris, France

baptiste.billoir@agent-biotech.com

LinkedIn

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HEPHAISTOS

HEPHAISTOS

Biotech

Created in 2018

11-20 employees

Turn up the heat on cold tumors

HEPHAISTOS is a preclinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on designing and developing a third-generation innate immune activator. Its mission is to address a major challenge in oncology: improving patient responses to existing immunotherapies by overcoming myeloid-driven tumor immunosuppression.

The company’s lead candidate, HEPHA-440, enhances antitumor activity through multiple mechanisms. It promotes the recruitment of immune effector cells into the tumor microenvironment (TME), reverses macrophage polarization, activates dendritic cells and antigen presentation, and triggers CD8 T-cell–mediated cytotoxicity.

HEPHA-440 is an engineered small-molecule TLR4 agonist of the third generation. Compared to earlier clinical-stage compounds such as GLA and GSK1795091, it is 30 to 400 times safer, and it is twice as effective as first-generation molecules like GLA and MPL. It is also suitable for intravenous administration.

Preclinical studies have shown that HEPHA-440 achieves a balanced MyD88–TRIF signaling profile that favors antitumor cytokine production while maintaining low pyrogenicity. It has demonstrated strong single-agent efficacy, including complete tumor regressions and systemic effects against metastases. In combination therapies, it shows synergy with anti-PD-1 and anti-CD20 antibodies, achieving up to 100% complete tumor regression in some models. Additionally, it significantly increases PD-1 and PD-L1 expression within the tumor microenvironment.

HEPHAISTOS has been awarded funding from the EIC Accelerator ($3 million) and the France 2030 RHU program ($11.5 million), and has also received recognition from Sanofi and Amgen through their Golden Ticket programs.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Frédéric Caroff

CEO

Orsay, France

fc@hephaistos-pharma.com

LinkedIn

INSCOPER

INSCOPER

Institution & Others

Series A – $2.4M raised

Created in 2016

11-20 employees including 1-5 in the USA

A Better Way to Record Live Cells

Inscoper provides high-performance super-resolution imaging solutions for Biopharma and CRO applications through its liveDRIM™ system. Optimized for organoids, 3D cell models, and high-content workflows, it delivers 100 nm resolution in thick, live samples without the typical trade-offs between speed, depth, and cell viability.

Inscoper also facilitates advanced microscopy workflows and custom OEM configurations. It helps generate the robust metrics needed for protocol development, and delivers the reproducible, analysis-ready data required to validate complex therapeutic approaches in diverse R&D environments.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Olivier Chanteux

CEO

New York, NY, USA

olivier.chanteux@inscoper.com

LinkedIn

Curlim

Curlim

Biotech

Series A – $15M to be raised

Created in 2024

1-5 employees

Revolutionizing Neuropathy Treatment

Based in France, Curlim is an innovative biotech company focused on developing therapeutic solutions for hereditary peripheral neuropathies and rare neurodegenerative diseases. These debilitating conditions, such as Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT), affect tens of thousands of patients in Europe and the U.S. and currently have no curative treatments. CMT, the most common inherited peripheral neuropathy, affects approximately 1 in 5,000 individuals worldwide representing a major unmet medical need for patients worldwide.

Curlim has developed an innovative encapsulation platform designed to improve the therapeutic efficacy of bioactive molecules for treating hereditary peripheral neuropathies and rare diseases. The benefits are better Solubility, better Stability, better Bioavailability and a significant increase of intra-cellular penetration (Trojan horse) allowing molecules to reach full therapeutic potential.

Curlim obtained unprecedented and spectacular therapeutic effects with significant rescue in the nerve function (demonstrated on 2 CMT1A animal models with no signs of toxicity, even with repeated doses. Some highlights : very significant improvement in Motor Nerve Conduction Velocities (MNCV) in all models and a normalisation of motor skills, with balance time on the bar not statistically different from normal rats.

Moreover, the platform is a flexible solution applicable to multiple drug candidates and therapeutic indications, far beyond neuropathies.

This makes Curlim not just a drug developer, but the owner of a scalable, high-value platform technology with long-term partnering and licensing potential.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Laurent Richebourg

CEO

Limoges, France

laurent.richebourg@curlim.eu

LinkedIn

Astrum

Astrum

CRO/CDMO

Created in 2004

250+ employees across Europe

Turning Science Into Success

Astrum is an international contract research organization (CRO) providing full-service clinical development solutions to biotech companies worldwide. With a team of over 250 professionals across Europe, Astrum combines the scientific rigor of a large CRO with the agility and responsiveness that emerging biotech sponsors need to advance their programs efficiently.

Astrum operates a proprietary 64-bed Phase I clinical unit in Porto, Portugal, inspected by EMA, FDA, ANVISA & enabling early-phase studies including single and multiple ascending dose, drug-drug interaction, bioequivalence, and food effect trials in healthy volunteers and patients, including critical indications through its integrated intensive care unit.

Beyond early phase, Astrum offers strong experience in Phase II and Phase III clinical trials, with particular expertise in oncology, immunology, and central nervous system (CNS) indications. Astrum also holds CIR (Crédit Impôt Recherche) accreditation in France, allowing French sponsors to optimize their R&D investment through significant tax benefits. Astrum is headquartered in Europe, with a large operational coverage across countries and a long-standing US partnership ensuring transatlantic trial execution.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Elisabeth Lackner

CEO

Paris, France

elisabeth.lackner@astrumcro.com

LinkedIn

Netris Pharma

Netris Pharma

Biotech, Pharma

$75M raised ; Series B – $70M to be raised

Created in 2008

11-20 employees

Overcome Cancer Resistance

Netris Pharma was founded by the pioneers of Dependence Receptors and its mission is to provide cancer patients with new treatment solutions able to overcome resistance to chemo- and Immunotherapies.

The company is currently developing NP137, a first-in-class monoclonal antibody targeting Netrin1, a new untapped oncology target aberrantly expressed in multiple tumor types. Netrin1 has been showed to promote Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and by disrupting the binding of Netrin1 to its receptors, NP137 is arguably the first compound able to break the deadlock of EMT to reduce metastasis and block resistance to cancer treatment. The product benefits from an excellent safety profile in monotherapy and in combination, and has already shown signs of antitumoral activity. In particular, the LAPNET study of NP137 in combination with mFolfirinox in Pancreatic cancer patients revealed neogenin as a potential predictive biomarker and opened a path for a biomarker-driven development in PDAC. Beyond PDAC, interim efficacy data in HNSCC and HCC further illustrate the potential of the product across solid tumors and strengthen the committment to advance NP137 as a new treatment option to address patient populations with high unmet medical need.

In order to leverage the full potential of anti Netrin-1 therapeutics, Netris Pharma is also investigating the potential of NP137 in Endometriosis. Indeed, consistent with its role in EMT, Netrin1 expression has been documented in endometriosis lesions and the company generated exciting preclinical data on reduction of disease progression, inflammation, fibrosis and related pain symptoms that could lead to the first non-hormonal disease-modifier for this vastly underserved indication.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patrick Mehlen

CEO

Lyon, France

patrickmehlen@netrispharma.com

LinkedIn