Wren Therapeutics Completes £18 Million Series A Financing

Wren Therapeutics (“Wren”), a biopharmaceutical company focused on drug
discovery and development for protein misfolding diseases, today
announces it has completed a Series A financing round. The company,
formally founded in 2016, raised a total of £18 million from an
international syndicate led by The Baupost Group with participation from
LifeForce Capital and a number of high net worth individual investors.

Protein molecules form the machinery that carries out all of the
executive functions in living systems. However, proteins sometimes
malfunction and become misfolded, leading to a complex chain of
molecular events that can ultimately cause long lasting damage in the
patient and can lead to fatality. This group of medical disorders are
known as protein misfolding diseases. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor
neurone diseases are widely recognised protein misfolding diseases, but
others include type-2 diabetes and many rare diseases amongst the more
than 50 in total.

Samuel Cohen, Ph.D., one of Wren’s founders, will become the
permanent Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Cohen commented: “Protein
misfolding diseases are one of the most critical global healthcare
challenges of the 21^st century but are highly
complex and challenging to address. Current strategies - in particular
those driven by traditional drug discovery and biological approaches -
have proven, at least to date, to be ineffective.” Commenting
further Dr. Cohen stated: “Wren’s new and unique approach
is instead built on concepts from the physical sciences and focuses on
the chemical kinetics of the protein misfolding process, creating a
predictive and quantitatively driven platform that has the potential to
radically advance drug discovery in this class of diseases.”

The company has received a significant level of interest from external
counterparties in its work to date and across many of the most important
targets in drug discovery today.

The scientific founders include:

• Sir Chris Dobson FRS FMedSci, John Humphrey Plummer Professor of
  Chemical and Structural Biology at the University of Cambridge and
  Master of St John’s College, Cambridge, and will serve as
  Vice-Chairman of the Board of Wren
• Michele Vendruscolo, Professor of Biophysics at the University of
  Cambridge, and Chief Scientific Officer of Wren
• Tuomas Knowles, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University
  of Cambridge
• Sara Linse, Professor of Molecular Protein Science and Physical
  Chemistry at Lund University and Member of the Nobel Prize Committee
  for Chemistry

The company is based at the University of Cambridge, in the recently
opened Chemistry of Health Centre, and plans on opening a satellite
office in Boston, Massachusetts in the near term. Additionally, the
company will announce its board of directors in the coming weeks.

Professor Sir Chris Dobson, one of the founders of Wren, added: "Wren
is built on many years of highly collaborative, uniquely integrated,
interdisciplinary research that has uncovered the key molecular
mechanisms associated with protein misfolding diseases. I am hugely
enthusiastic about our ability to make tangible progress against these
diseases and change the course of life for millions of people around the
world suffering from these debilitating and increasingly common medical
disorders.”

About Wren

Wren (www.wrentherapeutics.com)
is a spin-off company from the University of Cambridge (UK) and Lund
University (Sweden), focused on drug discovery and development for
protein misfolding diseases. Wren is advancing an entirely novel
approach to address this class of diseases, based on more than a decade
of research from its scientific founders focused on the chemical
kinetics of the protein misfolding process. These advances make it
possible to map, and selectively modulate, the complex and non-linear
chemical kinetic networks associated with misfolding proteins and
disease. Wren's predictive, quantitative platform is built on concepts
from the physical sciences and is a fundamental shift from the
descriptive, qualitative methods of traditional biology, which have
failed to successfully address these complex systems. Wren is using its
unique approach to develop a broad pipeline of small molecule and
antibody therapeutics, as well as diagnostics, spanning neurology,
ophthalmology and metabolic diseases.

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