Mnemosyne Pharmaceuticals changes name, moves to Cambridge

MNEMOSYNE Pharmaceuticals has changed its name to Luc Therapeutics and has moved its headquarters to Cambridge.
MNEMOSYNE Pharmaceuticals has changed its name to Luc Therapeutics and has moved its headquarters to Cambridge.

PROVIDENCE – Mnemosyne Pharmaceuticals has changed its name to Luc Therapeutics and moved its headquarters from Providence to Cambridge.
The biotechnology company, in a press release, also announced the appointment of Timothy Piser as chief scientific officer.
Before joining Luc, he spent almost two decades at AstraZeneca and, most recently, Forum Pharmaceuticals, where he led discovery project and development product teams from lead optimization through phase 2 clinical trials.
“I am thrilled to join Luc. Neuroscience drug discovery and development is being transformed by emerging new understandings of psychiatric and neurological disorders, as well as newly translatable and validated biomarkers,” Piser said in a statement.
The release stated that the company changed its name to the more simple Luc – pronounced “Luke” – to better reflect its ongoing “corporate evolution” and its “overall synaptic plasticity-oriented drug development strategy.”
“Changing our name to Luc Therapeutics reflects the tremendous progress we have made to focus our discovery capabilities on areas where NMDA receptor modulation offers the most tractable path to potential therapeutics for patients,” Vanessa King, Luc’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “‘Luc’ references the English word lucidity and the Italian word luce; our intention is to develop therapeutics that will bring clarity and light, metaphorically, to the minds of patients.”
Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, was the mother of the nine muses.
Luc Therapeutics will focus on the discovery of therapeutics to address serious psychiatric diseases through modulating dynamic synaptic plasticity – the ability of the billions of synaptic connections in the human brain to change over time, the release stated.
“Luc’s heritage through Mnemosyne has been one of deep expertise in the pharmacology of NMDA receptors, which are central to the strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections in the brain. Tim Piser is an ideal addition to the Luc team, bringing industry experience in leading drug discovery and development programs for therapeutics relevant to our success,” King said. “And, in parallel, our move to Cambridge provides us with an ideal environment for progressing our programs. We are excited to immerse ourselves fully in this world-class biotechnology cluster.”
Richard Horan, managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, said it is disappointing that the company left Rhode Island, but said the leadership was becoming more Boston- and Cambridge-based.

Horan said the company, like many drug discovery ventures, has been operating in “virtual company mode,” with a team of six to seven key scientists.
Horan said Slater invested $1.5 million total in the company, through three different rounds. He said the company raised a total of $12 million in venture investment.
Once a company moves out of Rhode Island, Slater would no longer invest in it, Horan said.
“We continue to hold an equity investment in the company and are quite hopeful, if not optimistic, about receiving the upside in our investment,” Horan said. “Drug discovery ventures are long-term, high-risk and very capital-intensive.”

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Do we have a different definition of success for startups and biotechs? It seems as though people expect the goal to be development of large companies employing considerable #s of people and doing their expansion right here in RI. Yet, some consider it success if they get their start-up done here, and can become big players in the Boston biotech market. As we delight in the success of a company like Mnemosyne, some scratch their heads and wonder if this is the way it is supposed to work…maybe we need agreement on goals, objectives and expectations so there is no misunderstanding.