On February 2, 2024, Alto Neuroscience, a precision medicine company focused
on the mental health sector, has successfully debuted on the New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol "ANRO." The IPO was priced at $16 per
share, raising over $129 million in funds. Notably, in 2023, Alto received
investment from Gaorong Ventures during its Series C financing round.
Alto Neuroscience is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company with a mission to redefine psychiatry by leveraging neurobiology to develop personalized and highly effective treatment options.
Founded in 2019 by Dr. Amit Etkin, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University, Alto leverages a profound understanding of brain functionality. By adopting a differentiated drug development approach, Alto aims to efficiently create precision drugs for mental health patients, avoiding potentially lengthy and ineffective treatment processes. Traditional psychiatric drug development often faces high failure rates at the clinical stage due to a lack of understanding of how drugs affect the human brain.
Alto’s Precision Psychiatry Platform™ measures brain biomarkers by analyzing EEG activity, neurocognitive assessments, wearable data, and other factors to better identify which patients are more likely to respond to Alto product candidates.
Currently, Alto has progressed five clinical-stage pipelines targeting populations with specific brain biomarkers associated with MDD and schizophrenia. These pipelines have undergone at least Phase I clinical trials, demonstrating good safety and tolerability. The fastest advancing candidates, ALTO-100 and ALTO-300, have successfully completed Phase IIa trials with over 200 patients each and are swiftly progressing to Phase IIb. ALTO-100 targets MDD patients with neural cognitive biomarkers, while ALTO-300 targets MDD patients with EEG biomarkers. Furthermore, Alto plans to initiate Phase II efficacy validation clinical trials for ALTO-101 and ALTO-203 in the first half of 2024. These trials will respectively focus on treating schizophrenic patients with cognitive impairments and MDD patients experiencing pleasure loss.
In the healthcare sector, Gaorong Ventures seeks to identify and support internationally innovative companies, continuing its investment in outstanding enterprises across new drug development, medical devices, digital health, and medical services.
