Alto Neuroscience raises $60M (equity + credit) to help fix the “trial and error” approach to psychiatric medication

Alto Neu­ro­science bags $25M for four Phase II drugs (End­points News):

Anoth­er $25 mil­lion is flow­ing the way of a Cal­i­for­nia biotech attempt­ing to fix the “tri­al and error” sys­tem in neu­ro­science drug R&D.

Alto Neu­ro­science picked up the cap­i­tal from Alpha Wave Ven­tures via an exten­sion to its Series B, bring­ing total equi­ty raised to $100 mil­lion since the startup’s 2019 founding.

… The approx­i­mate­ly 50-employ­ee start­up hopes to move past the “tri­al and error” approach of neu­ro­science drug devel­op­ment, per­haps most rec­og­niz­able by the lengths patients have to go through to find the depres­sion meds that actu­al­ly work for them.

To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.

Ear­li­er this month, the biotech tout­ed open-label Phase IIa results for its lead depres­sion asset, ALTO-100, which were sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant as both a sin­gle ther­a­py and adjunctive.

The Announcement:

Alto Neu­ro­science Announces $60 Mil­lion in Addi­tion­al Financ­ing (press release):

Alto Neu­ro­science Inc. today announced a $25 mil­lion equi­ty invest­ment by new investor, Alpha Wave Ven­tures. This brings Alto’s total Series B fund­ing to approx­i­mate­ly $60 mil­lion and total equi­ty cap­i­tal raised to approx­i­mate­ly $100 mil­lion since the com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2019. In addi­tion, Alto recent­ly entered into a cred­it facil­i­ty with K2 HealthVen­tures for up to $35 mil­lion, allow­ing access to addi­tion­al cap­i­tal and flex­i­bil­i­ty as the com­pa­ny advances its clin­i­cal-stage pipeline…

Chris Dim­itropou­los, of Alpha Wave Glob­al, stat­ed, “This financ­ing is a tes­ta­ment to our con­fi­dence in Alto’s sci­ence, plat­form, team, and abil­i­ty to exe­cute. We are encour­aged by their unique approach backed by over a decade of human data explor­ing brain mech­a­nisms and patient het­ero­gene­ity. The recent pos­i­tive clin­i­cal results in depres­sion pro­vide con­fi­dence that a pre­ci­sion approach in this field is achiev­able and like­ly to dri­ve bet­ter out­comes for patients.”

The News in Context:

• Pre­ci­sion psy­chi­a­try pio­neer Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $35M to advance dig­i­tal bio­mark­er-to-treat­ment platform
• Machine-learn­ing study finds EEG brain sig­na­tures that pre­dict response to anti­de­pres­sant treatments