RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Evecxia Therapeutics, a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company co-founded by two Duke neuro-psychopharmacologists, has secured $2.4M from Miami-based Collage Venture Partners, according to an SEC filing signed recently.

The late Marc Caron, PhD, and Jacob Jacobsen, PhD, together founded Evecxia based on intellectual property (IP) developed from Jacobsen’s lab, according to the Evecxia website. Jacobsen is listed as Evecxia’s co-founder and CEO.

On Duke’s Translation & Commercialization website, Evecxia is described as a “singular mission” to develop and commercialize a treatment for depressed patients who do not respond to conventional antidepressants.

According to the SEC filing, Evecxia raised $2.4M and is seeking an additional $5.5M to close an $8M round. Miami-based Stonehaven was listed as the broker.

Partnerships

The Evecxia website describes two major partnerships: A worldwide license agreement between Evecxia Therapeutics and Duke University School of Medicine that began in 2015, granting Evecxia the exclusive right to develop and commercialize certain issued patents and pending patent applications, and a collaboration between Evecxia Therapeutics and Tempus that began in 2020, with Tempus providing data analysis support on Evecxia’s clinical trials.