Cerevance, a private drug discovery and development company focused on brain diseases, has closed a Series B financing, bringing in $45 million from new investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Bill Gates and Foresite Capital, as well as all of the company’s previous investors, which include Takeda Ventures, Inc., the corporate venture arm of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd., the Dementia Discovery Fund and Lightstone Ventures.

Cerevance will use the proceeds of the financing to continue identifying novel therapeutic targets for central nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, by transcriptionally and epigenetically profiling specific neuronal and glial cell populations in thousands of post-mortem human brain tissue samples and advancing a diverse portfolio of therapeutic programs against them.

“Cerevance has a differentiated approach to neurotherapeutics and continues to apply its powerful NETSseq platform to central nervous system diseases,” said David Schenkein, M.D., General Partner at GV. “With exceptional science, a strong sense of urgency and a leadership team that has previously succeeded together in drug discovery, Cerevance is well-positioned to deliver life-changing therapeutics for patients with brain diseases.”

“It’s hard to imagine a more stellar group of investors supporting us,” said Brad Margus, chief executive officer of Cerevance. “We look forward to drawing on their expertise in deep data analysis and therapeutic development as we mine our unique biological data sets to advance new, desperately needed therapies for brain diseases.”

Cerevance will use the proceeds of the financing to continue identifying novel therapeutic targets for central nervous system diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.