A startup that wants to regenerate human hearts and brains just announced a new chief financial officer — and it could mean an IPO in 2019

pulse

September 21, 2018 12:14 PM

BlueRock Therapeutics, a cell and gene therapy biotech company focused on regenerative medicine, just hired a new chief financial officer as the company experiences exponential growth and its anticipating for its first therapy to move into human trials.

BlueRock Therapeutics
more biotech IPOs than ever before

BlueRock Therapeutics, a moonshot project from regenerating human heart and brain cells to help patients with Parkinson's Disease and heart failure.

On Thursday, the Cambridge-based company brought on former investment banker Shane Kovacs as its new CFO, as the company prepares to raise more funding and to potentially go public in 2019.

To date, it's raised $225 million in funding.

BlueRock is hoping to deliver a one-two punch in tackling disease by combining techniques used in both modern day cell therapy and gene therapy. To fuel this, they are creating master bank of universal stem cells – cells that can be made into any type of cell patients need from heart to brain.

Using these cells, they can repair damaged cells in the brains of Parkinson's patients, and regenerate heart muscles in patients with heart failure.They can also tweak and correct rare genetic disorders or mutations while they're creating these new cells.

So far, the team has set its sights on three areas: neurology, cardiology, and autoimmune function.

The leading drug in BlueRock's therapeutic pipeline is its Parkinson's Disease therapy. The company recently filed an application with the FDA in order to start clinical trials on the treatment. The team expects to start dosing in human patients by the end of this year. The trial will allow the team to monitor safety and access effects.

In the pipeline, BlueRock's cardiology program for heart failures is currently being tested in animal models, and its autoimmune program is set to undergo pre-clinical proof-of-concept studies.

In 2018, there has been 38 biotech IPOs so far, raising almost $3.9 billion in total which is the highest dollar amount since 2000, according to Bloomberg.

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