Start-up biotech with Nobel founder, $8M lands in Florida

A start-up biotech that counts a Nobel laureate among its founders has settled in Jupiter, FL with $8 million in venture cash in the bank. Landing the fledgling biotech company is a win for Florida economic development officials, who have been anxious to built a new cluster around the research institutions which have moved to the state. 

Envoy Therapeutics has set out to discover new drugs that can target proteins in the brain. And the Palm Beach Post says that Envoy intends to build a pipeline of new therapies for schizophrenia, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, drug addiction, epilepsy, anxiety and depression and other disorders.

One of Envoy's founders is Paul Greengard, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University who won a Nobel prize in 2000 for his work on the role dopamine plays in the nervous system. "They have a way of dealing with individual brain cell genes," said Richard Lerner, president of The Scripps Research Institute. "They find proteins produced in very specialized areas of the brain."

- read the story from the Palm Beach Post