Axonis Therapeutics gets $115 million to treat pain

Axonis Therapeutics has received $115 million in an oversubscribed series A financing round. CEO and cofounder Joanna Stanicka calls this a huge milestone and says the money will help fund a Phase 1 clinical trial of the firm’s neuropathic pain treatment that is scheduled to begin at the end of the year. Stanicka started working on neurobiology as a postdoc in Zhigang He’s laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital Harvard Medical School. There, she and research fellow Shane Hegarty studied ways to repair central nervous system function in people with spinal cord injuries. The pair cofounded Axonis with Corey Goodman, a cofounder of the venture capital firm venBio Partners, and Bob Yant, who had a severe spinal cord injury in 1981 and has raised millions for spinal cord research. Stanicka says that when it comes to neuropathic pain, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) mediated pathways are “one of the best studied and targeted