Encepheal Therapeutics YC Application

Summer 2019Inactive

Encepheal Therapeutics went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2019 batch as a Healthcare company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2019
Industry: HealthcareTherapeutics
Team size: 3
Status: Inactive
Launched: 2019

Founders

Aaron LazarusFounder
Omeed RahimiFounder

What Encepheal Therapeutics does

EncepHeal is developing medications to treat substance abuse. Our first product is a small molecule therapeutic for stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine, of which there are no FDA approved treatments. Our small molecule technology are atypical inhibitors of the dopamine transporter. Cocaine itself is an inhibitor of the same transporter. Directly reducing craving or positive reinforcement is a successful treatment strategy for addiction. Methadone or buprenorphine (Suboxone) are key examples of this for opioid use disorder. However, these types of medications can be addictive themselves. This has been a major hurdle for medication development for cocaine addiction and has led to many leaders in the addiction space to abandon the dopamine transporter as a target. At EncepHeal, we believe that the dopamine transporter should not be abandoned and instead focusing on fixing the abuse liability problem. Therefore with our partners at the National Institutes of Health, we have shown that these new, allosteric modulators at the dopamine transporter do not display addictive tendencies in animal models. They are also effective at curbing cocaine addiction. Our management team has two co-founders, Omeed Rahimi and Aaron Lazarus, as well as an experienced addiction pharmacologist as their research officer. The team has an advisory board with entrepreneurial and addiction drug development experience as well as expert partners at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a subset of the NIH, and Wake Forest. Our team has had success in raising non-dilutive funding and has expertise with SBIR/STTR grants. We are looking for help in better connecting with the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.

Encepheal Therapeutics's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Encepheal Therapeutics, Summer 2019 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Encepheal Therapeutics

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Medications to treat substance abuse

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We're developing small molecule drugs that target the dopamine transporter to treat stimulant addiction, starting with cocaine and methamphetamine. Our compounds modulate the dopamine transporter allosterically to reduce addictive cravings without the addictive properties of current dopamine transporter inhibitors.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We currently live and work in Winston-Salem, NC, and the company is based there. After YC, we plan to maintain our base in Winston-Salem due to our partnerships and existing infrastructure.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose Winston-Salem because we have strong research collaborations with the National Institutes of Health and Wake Forest, which are local. This proximity helps us advance our drug development efficiently.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Encepheal Therapeutics YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Encepheal Therapeutics's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Encepheal Therapeutics would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.