New York City-based TriGemX Bio (formerly Kallyope) has raised USD 94 million in a financing co-led by The Column Group, TCGX, and Viking Global Investors to advance Phase III trials of elismetrep, its oral TRPM8 channel blocker for acute migraine treatment.
TCGX and Viking Global Investors joined the syndicate as new investors, with additional undisclosed investors also participating. As part of the financing, Cariad Chester, Managing Partner at TCGX, joined the TriGemX Bio Board of Directors.
Alongside the financing, the company announced a relaunch under its new name and the appointment of Jeff Goater as Chief Executive Officer and Aninda Katragadda as Chief Financial Officer. Goater joins from The Column Group, where he continues as a Venture Partner, and previously served as CEO of Surface Oncology and CFO of Voyager Therapeutics. The relaunch follows Kallyope's divestment of its obesity programs to Novo Nordisk, leaving TriGemX increasingly focused on elismetrep and its migraine franchise.
TriGemX/Kallyope was originally a Columbia University spinout founded around research from the laboratories of neuroscientists Charles Zuker and Richard Axel and molecular biologist Tom Maniatis. The company was initially built to translate discoveries in sensory and neural-circuit biology into therapeutics, providing the scientific foundation for its later work on peripheral sensory targets.