Neu­rol­o­gy has long been seen as a high-risk in­vest­ment.

Bio­phar­ma’s un­der­stand­ing of how the brain works is still rudi­men­ta­ry com­pared with that of oth­er or­gans, as is its knowl­edge of what dri­ves spe­cif­ic neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases. Pa­tient pop­u­la­tions are al­so het­ero­ge­neous, so suc­cess in ear­ly- or mid-stage tri­als doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to wins lat­er in the clin­ic.

But the area now seems “ripe” for deal­mak­ing, ac­cord­ing to a ma­jor­i­ty of ob­servers in­ter­viewed by End­points News.

There’s al­ready been a hand­ful of large deals this year, start­ing with John­son & John­son’s $14.6 bil­lion buy­out of In­tra-Cel­lu­lar Ther­a­pies and its bipo­lar dis­or­der drug Caply­ta. Eli Lil­ly fol­lowed suit in May with its ac­qui­si­tion of non-opi­oid pain biotech SiteOne Ther­a­peu­tics for up to $1 bil­lion. Sanofi al­so snapped up Alzheimer’s drug­mak­er Vig­il Neu­ro­science for $470 mil­lion the same month.

Pfiz­er's for­mer CSO and a Yale Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor who's helped form mul­ti­ple mol­e­c­u­lar glue star­tups have cre­at­ed a new biotech in the ex­cit­ing field.

Mikael Dol­sten is the found­ing CEO and chair of Quar­ry Thera, ac­cord­ing to pub­licly avail­able doc­u­ments. He left Pfiz­er last year and is now be­ing pro­posed as a board di­rec­tor at No­vo Nordisk. He's al­so lined up board roles at com­pa­nies like Or­bis Med­i­cines, Chai Dis­cov­ery and Bench­Sci.

He co-found­ed Quar­ry with Yale pro­fes­sor Craig Crews, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Yale Cen­ter for Mol­e­c­u­lar Dis­cov­ery. Crews helped launch biotechs like Arv­inas, Hal­da Ther­a­peu­tics, and Sidu­ma Ther­a­peu­tics, which shut­tered last year. Dur­ing Dol­sten's time at Pfiz­er, the com­pa­ny forged a land­mark deal with Arv­inas to work on PRO­TACs. Their lead mol­e­cule is now in search of a sav­ior.

Ven­tyx Bio­sciences' Phase 2 da­ta showed a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in car­dio­vas­cu­lar risks in pa­tients with obe­si­ty through NL­RP3 in­hi­bi­tion, a close­ly watched tar­get in neu­ro­log­ic and car­diometa­bol­ic drug de­vel­op­ment.

Af­ter the read­out was an­nounced on Wednes­day, the biotech's stock VTYX was up more than 85% on Thurs­day morn­ing.

That said, the fu­ture of VTX3232 could hinge on the am­bi­tions of Sanofi, which paid $27 mil­lion in Sep­tem­ber of last year to snag the rights to first ne­go­ti­a­tion for the once-dai­ly oral NL­RP3 in­hibitor. Sanofi has act­ed on sim­i­lar rights, hav­ing bought Vig­il Neu­ro­science ear­li­er this year af­ter get­ting the ne­go­ti­a­tion rights to the biotech's Alzheimer's dis­ease drug in 2024.

"This is the first time we're pub­licly dis­clos­ing this da­ta, so has not had a chance to see it. I'm hop­ing some of them have seen it to­day," Ven­tyx CEO Ra­ju Mo­han said Wednes­day dur­ing an an­a­lyst call.