Ambrosia Biosciences launches with $16M investment, Array chemistry team 

BOULDER — Ambrosia Biosciences Inc., a recently formed drug-discovery company, has raised a $16 million Series A round and reunited a team of scientists that previously worked for Pfizer Inc.’s (NYSE: PFE) now-shuttered Boulder research and development operation. 

The funding round for Ambrosia, which will initially focus on developing small-molecule drug therapies for obesity and other metabolic disorders, was led by local investor Boulder Ventures and San Francisco-based BVF Partners.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer ended operations at 3200 Walnut St. this spring, resulting in an undisclosed number of job cuts. The facility, which Pfizer took over in 2019 as part of its $11 billion acquisition of Boulder-based oncology company Array BioPharma Inc., had focused mainly on oncology drug research. That work was performed by some of the same scientists who migrated in the Array acquisition and who are now members of the Ambrosia team. 

A company spokesperson declined to provide BizWest with details about where the Ambrosia scientists will work and whether the company has taken space in the former Array/Pfizer space. 

“Array BioPharma was among the best small molecule drug discovery teams on the planet,” said Kyle Lefkoff, founding Partner at Boulder Ventures, executive Chairman of Ambrosia and former chairman of Array BioPharma. “With the recent shut down of the Pfizer/Array R&D facility here in Boulder, we have re-assembled the Array medicinal chemistry team at Ambrosia to apply that same expertise to obesity.”

The company will focus its early efforts to “discover and develop novel orally delivered, small molecule-based therapies targeting incretins and other class B GPCRs (a type of secretin receptors regulated by peptide hormones),” Ambrosia said. 

Ambrosia was founded by Nick Traggis, who was previously the CEO of LightDeck Diagnostics, a medical-test maker acquired by Heska Corp. (Nasdaq: HSKA) in 2022. 

“While this is a very active space, there is significant science yet to be understood and plenty of opportunity to improve upon existing GLP-1 based drugs,” Traggis said in a prepared statement.  GLP-1 peptides are components of several increasingly popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs. “I’m proud of the work our founding science team has already done and look forward to using this financing to scale up our drug discovery efforts.”

Ambrosia isn’t the only Boulder-based drug-discovery team focused on weight-loss treatments. 

Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Corden Pharma International GmbH plans to invest nearly $500 million over the next three years to expand its operations in Boulder to produce more GLP-1 peptides.

All told, Corden expects to invest about $981 million to expand its global peptide-manufacturing capacity to meet skyrocketing demand and a 1 billion-euro (nearly $1.09 billion) sales goal for peptide-platform drugs by 2028.