Situation Assessment

• Locust Walk co-founded NewCo with two scientific founders in the fields of hematology, oncology, immunoengineering, and mechanoregeneration
• The novel technology aims to leverage the body’s inherent regenerative capacity to create therapeutics to restore immunity damaged by toxins, disease, or age
• The scientific co-founders received investor interest and were seeking support to turn ground-breaking research into a company to accelerate its development and raise capital
• Locust Walk’s objective as co-founder was to support the academic founders to help build a company while retaining as much value for the founders as possible

Key Activities

• Worked closely with co-founders to develop a full business plan, including pre-clinical and clinical development strategies, indication prioritization, company organization chart, pre-clinical budget, and use of proceeds plan
• Prepared non-confidential and confidential investor materials, positioning the company story in a way that resonated with investors
• Conducted investor outreach to our network of accredited investors and facilitated management discussions, providing support throughout the due diligence process
• Lead deal dynamics and collaborated with investors and legal team to establish a timeline and drive the financing to close
• Negotiated licensing terms with the technology transfer office at a leading research university to enable company spinout

Successful Outcome

• Locust Walk along with the founders helped incorporate the business, develop a business plan, build a detailed budget and raised a twice upsized seed round of ~$7M
• Funding enables the company to further develop both immune regeneration platforms, supporting preclinical data generation in HSCT complications and proof-of-principle for platform expansion opportunities
• Funding will also support finalizing CMC and regulatory development for IND-enabling studies