Takeda Pharmaceutical and Lightstone Ventures, a Menlo Park, California-based investment firm, have launched a new neuroscience-focused company named Cerevance to discover and develop therapeutics for neurological and psychiatric disorders. Cerevance is funded with $36 million that includes a $21.5 million financing investment from Takeda and Lightstone Ventures, with each joining Cerevance’s Board of Directors.

Takeda will jumpstart the new company by providing a 25-person neuroscience research team from its Cambridge, UK site, including fully equipped laboratory space and licenses to a portfolio of preclinical and clinical-stage drug programs. The new company will use a technology created in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute laboratory of Nathaniel Heintz, PhD at the Rockefeller University. Cerevance will have sites in both Massachusetts and the UK.

Source: Takeda Pharmaceutical