Cambridge, UK, 12 May 2022: o2h Ventures is pleased to announce an EIS investment into Neurocentrx Pharma Ltd, a collaborative biotech company based in Edinburgh developing orally delivered drug products formulations of ketamine that are primarily aimed to treat mood disorders like Depression.
Neurocentrx’s broader interests lie in psychiatric, mental health and mood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and complex pain management in cancer and palliative care. Their focus is to provide existing approved drugs in new and improved formats for patients – through reformulation, reindication, clinical development and product in-licensing. Neurocentrx is currently commencing phase 1 development with one of their proprietary oral ketamine formulations.
The investment was made from o2h Ventures human health knowledge-intensive EIS fund which is Britain’s first HMRC-approved knowledge intensive fund solely focused on investing in knowledge-intensive EIS qualifying companies focused on novel drug discovery and AI technologies. o2h Ventures has a track record of supporting and investing in some of the UK’s most innovative early-stage biotech firms and have now invested into >25 companies over the last three years from the human health funds.
Sunil Shah, CEO at o2h Ventures said: “We are really excited to back Carmel on this journey to develop an oral ketamine drug for the treatment of depression. Looking forward to supporting her on this journey.”
Carmel Reilly, CEO at Neurocentrx said: “Our investment partners have joined us at an exciting time as we start our growth phase and we commence our first clinical trial with oral ketamine. This investment will help us build our executive team, plan our approval studies, and build partnerships with academic and commercial partners. We are delighted to have Sunil and 02h Ventures as our backers alongside Neo Kuma, Meltwind, Old College Capital, Equity Gap and Scottish Enterprise in this new syndicate as a key part of our support team.”
About Neurocentrx
Neurocentrx is a collaborative biotech company based in Edinburgh, focused on medicines to treat patients with neurological conditions. The company is developing existing drugs, in new oral delivery formats, for unmet clinical needs.
Neurocentrxs’ interests lie in psychiatric, mental health and mood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and complex pain management in cancer and palliative care. They are developing oral ketamine formulations for clinical trials in these areas.
Ketamine has been shown by others to be useful in treating Depression. Ketamine seems to act quickly for responding patients. This is key, as most antidepressants take many weeks to work, or to fail. Long term effects of Ketamine and its mechanism of action are not yet fully understood, but much research worldwide continues in these areas.
For more information, please see – https://www.neurocentrx.com/
About o2h ventures
The o2h Ventures ‘Human Health’ funds make tax-efficient EIS and SEIS investments in Pre-Seed and Seed stage companies that address human disease: we fund the development of novel therapeutic treatments; we help build new services and tools offerings throughout the biotech ecosystem, and we spur the creation of software & artificial intelligence that will change healthcare.
The o2h team are leaders in the biotech community and have been actively involved as investors, holding various board/industry positions as well as being engaged in grassroots scientific activity for over 20 years. o2h Ventures operates from their proprietary 2.7 acre Mill SciTech Park where they are developing a unique model for incubating small life science companies.
For more information or to invest in the fund, please visit www.o2hventures.com
Media Contact:
Ajit Guller
Marketing Manager
ajit@o2h.com
