Violet Therapeutics Raises $4.8M Seed Financing Extension

The company’s drug target discovery platform is based on RABID-seq, a method that measures cell-to-cell interactions in the brain with single-cell readouts.

Violet Therapeutics, a preclinical-stage biotechnology company developing therapies for neurodegenerative disease, has closed a $4.8 million seed extension financing, the company announced May 18.

Lifespan Vision Ventures (LVV) led the round, with participation from Dementia Discovery Fund, UTEC, Ono Venture Investment, and Mass General Brigham Ventures.

Proceeds will support activities for its lead small molecule program targeting EphB3, a receptor tyrosine kinase implicated in microglia-astrocyte signaling. The company is evaluating how how glial signaling contributes to the preservation and repair of synapses in the brain, or lack thereof.

EphB3 emerged from Violet’s proprietary CONNECT platform, which maps cell-to-cell signaling interactions in the brain to identify pathways involved in brain inflammation, neurodegeneration, and synaptic loss.

CONNECT is in turn based on RABID-seq, a method developed by researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School that traces cell-cell interactions using modified rabies virus with a barcoding scheme that is read out with single-cell sequencing. [Editor’s note: I first covered RABID-seq in 2021 for GenomeWeb.]