NRG Therapeutics Secures $67 Million to Push Parkinson’s and ALS Drug Toward Human Trials

A British biotech company, NRG Therapeutics, has raised £50 million (about $67 million) to take its first experimental medicine for Parkinson’s disease and ALS into clinical testing next year. The funding round was backed by some heavyweight investors, including the venture arms of pharmaceutical giants Merck KGaA and Novartis. In total, seven venture firms joined in, with SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund leading the financing, alongside Omega Funds. NRG is developing a pill designed to protect brain cells by targeting mitochondria — the tiny “power plants” inside our cells that produce energy. When mitochondria are damaged, cells struggle to survive. In Parkinson’s and ALS, toxic proteins can push mitochondria toward collapse, eventually killing brain cells. NRG’s approach is to block a specific protein complex inside mitochondria known as mPTP. Shutting down this complex may stop the cascade of damage, reduce inflammation, and help brain cells live longer. The company’s most advanced drug candidate, called NRG-5051, is a small molecule that showed promising results in preclinical studies. With the new funding, the company hopes to move NRG-5051 into clinical trials by early 2026. This is part of a broader wave of scientific interest in targeting mitochondria for brain diseases. AbbVie, for example, acquired a company called Mitokinin in 2023 to gain access to its mitochondrial therapies. Another biotech, Pretzel Therapeutics, launched in 2022 and is already testing a treatment for rare mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes. Neil Miller, NRG’s CEO and one of its three co-founders, said this shift reflects how much better scientists now understand how to design drugs that act on mitochondria. In the past, he noted, experimental mitochondrial therapies were not very precise and often went into clinical testing under “suboptimal circumstances.” Miller co-founded NRG in 2018 with Richard Rutter and Grant Hawthorne — their initials form the company’s name — after closing down their previous biotech, Auspherix. At the start, it was a tough pitch to investors, but the team kept afloat with support from research charities and specialist funds. Early backers included Parkinson’s UK and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2022, Omega Funds led a £16 million Series A round that gave NRG the resources to push its research forward. The new Series B round now puts the company in a stronger position. Alongside the funding, Miller said NRG is actively looking for pharmaceutical partners to help develop and eventually commercialise its therapies. According to Miller, renewed interest from big pharma in neuroscience is helping companies like NRG attract attention and capital. “It feels to me we’re on the cusp of a major change,” he said.