Verge Genomics

Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). 

It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.

As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage. 

Key customers and partnerships

The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform. 

In addition, the company’s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) Eli Lilly to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) Alexion to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium to analyze data from schizophrenic patient’s brain tissue with Verge’s technology (October 2023).

Funding and financials

In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing.