Corlieve Therapeutics today announced the closing of its seed financing led by Kurma Partners and IDinvest Partners, together with Pureos Bioventures. Corlieve is focused on developing novel therapeutics for severe neurological disorders.

Corlieve’s lead program employs a novel AAV gene therapy approach for the treatment of refractory temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), the most commonly diagnosed focal epilepsy in humans. The program is based on pioneering science from INSERM, CNRS, Aix Marseille University and the University of Bordeaux, and is being developed in collaboration with REGENXBIO Inc. (Maryland, US), a leading gene therapy company. In addition, Corlieve has licensed REGENXBIO’s NAV AAV9 technology for the TLE program. Corlieve is led by Chief Executive Officer Richard Porter, Ph.D., who brings to the Company over 25 years of neuroscience leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, including most recently as Chief Operating Officer of Therachon Holding AG until its acquisition by Pfizer in July 2019.

“I am excited to build Corlieve on a strong scientific foundation and with valuable support from our partners and investors,” said Dr. Porter. “Our novel approach allows us to bring potentially game-changing treatments to patients with neurological diseases.”

Corlieve’s board will consist of Vanessa Malier, Managing Partner at Kurma, Anja Harmeier, Partner at Pureos Bioventures and Olivier Danos, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of REGENXBIO.

“The formation of Corlieve with REGENXBIO is another validation of our approach to build companies on the basis of leading French science combined with a strong technology partner. We at Kurma are thrilled to support this emerging science to tackle TLE,” said Ms. Malier.

“Our mission at REGENXBIO is to develop and enable the use of our proprietary NAV Technology Platform to advance new gene therapies for diseases with significant unmet needs,” said Dr. Danos. “We are pleased to collaborate with Corlieve in this application of our NAV AAV9 technology to potentially treat patients suffering from TLE, for which better treatment modalities are needed.”