Wren Therapeutics Secures £18 Million Series A Funding to Advance Therapies for Protein Misfolding Diseases

VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) has learned that two years after divesting a 33% stake to the Irish life sciences company Malin in January 2017, Wrena Therapeutics announced on January 22 the completion of an £18 million Series A financing round. The round was led by the hedge fund The Baupost Group, with participation from LifeForce Capital and several high-net-worth individual investors.

Wren Therapeutics (“Wren”), founded in 2016, is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Cambridge, UK, focused on the development of therapies for diseases caused by protein misfolding.

Proteins play a crucial role in organisms, and protein folding is the most fundamental process of life activities. However, abnormal protein folding can result in misfolded proteins. Under certain pathological conditions, these misfolded proteins can form pathological aggregates, leading to cellular dysfunction and, in severe cases, even causing disease. In medicine, such conditions are referred to as "protein misfolding" diseases. To date, the medical community has identified more than 50 diseases caused by protein misfolding, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and many rare amyloidosis disorders.

“‘Protein misfolding’ diseases have garnered significant attention, but they are highly complex and difficult to address. To date, traditional biological approaches have not successfully resolved the challenges posed by the complex systems of living organisms,” commented Dr. Samuel Cohen, Co-founder and Permanent CEO of Wren.

Wren is advancing a novel approach to addressing these diseases, one that is rooted in physics rather than the traditional biology-based perspective. Several of Wren’s founders, who were educated at the University of Cambridge in the UK and Lund University in Ireland, have spent over a decade studying protein misfolding processes using chemical kinetics methods.

Wren’s patented technology platform is built on a new fundamental understanding of the origins of “protein misfolding” diseases, marking a paradigm shift from traditional descriptive and qualitative biological approaches. This breakthrough has the potential to fundamentally drive novel advancements in drug development for this class of diseases.

Currently, Wren is leveraging this platform to develop small-molecule and antibody therapies for various protein misfolding diseases, including major neurological disorders and rare diseases.

The Baupost Group is a successful hedge fund firm founded by Seth Klarman in Boston, United States, in 1982. Over the past 37 years, it has recorded losses in only three years, with its cumulative assets under management reaching $29.8 billion. The Baupost Group primarily invests in publicly traded stocks and private equity transactions, achieving an average annual investment return of over 20% to date.

LifeForce Capital primarily invests in digital health companies, enabling them to deliver new models of healthcare services or more effective therapeutic solutions.