Zogenix, Inc.

Mendra, Inc. (“Mendra”), a biopharmaceutical company built to advance promising therapies for rare disease medicines, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), today announced its launch in conjunction with the closing of an $82 million oversubscribed Series A financing. The round was co-led by OrbiMed, 8VC, and 5AM Ventures with participation from Lux Capital and Wing VC. Mendra aims to modernize the development and commercialization of rare disease therapies to more efficiently reach patients on a global scale. The company plans to employ AI to accelerate patient identification, clinical trial enrollment, and access to global markets. Funds from the Series A will be leveraged to acquire and develop initial rare disease assets for Mendra’s portfolio. “We are building Mendra to deliver high-potential rare disease medicines more effectively to patients on a global scale,” said Joshua Grass, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mendra. “By combining deep rare disease expertise with AI-driven capabilities across asset selection, clinical development, and global commercialization - some of the greatest challenges in rare disease drug development - we believe we can accelerate timelines, improve execution and expand access for these underserved patients.” Mendra is led by a seasoned management team with decades of experience spanning company building, rare disease drug development, global commercialization, and AI software development. Leadership Team: Joshua Grass, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, brings more than 20 years of biopharma leadership experience, including successful exits at Modis Therapeutics and Escient Pharmaceuticals, and an integral role in building BioMarin’s rare disease portfolio. Jeff Ajer, Chief Commercial Officer, has more than 25 years of global commercialization experience, including serving as Chief Commercial Officer at BioMarin, where he built and led the company’s commercial infrastructure and launched multiple rare disease therapies worldwide. Lalarukh Haris Shaikh, Ph.D., Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, brings deep experience at the intersection of life sciences, healthcare and technology; she previously served as Executive Vice President of Life Sciences and Aerospace at Palantir Technologies. Gregory Balani, Pharm.D., Vice President of Business Development, previously led business development at Escient Pharmaceuticals with prior BD roles at Zogenix and Bayer, and he most recently served as a venture investor at Avego Bioscience Capital. Founded in 2025 by 8VC and 5AM, Mendra is a biopharmaceutical company focused on improving the development and commercialization of rare disease therapies worldwide. Led and co-founded by CEO Joshua Grass with a highly experienced leadership team, Mendra utilizes AI to address long-standing challenges in patient identification, data curation, and clinical development for rare diseases. By streamlining the drug development process, Mendra plans to accelerate access to innovative treatments for underserved patient populations. Mendra is headquartered in San Francisco. The content above comes from the network. if any infringement, please contact us to modify.

A fresh biotech has raised $82 million to scour the landscape of rare disease medicines that need a new home for further development and apply lessons from executives’ experiences at BioMarin. The Bay Area startup, called Mendra, unveiled on Wednesday morning with a Series A that was co-led by OrbiMed, 8VC and 5AM Ventures. CEO Joshua Grass has been a venture partner at 5AM for the past year and was a 15-year BioMarin veteran. Lux Capital and Wing VC also took part in the round. Grass’ goal is to roll up a suite of medicines for orphan diseases across a variety of therapeutic areas, types of treatment modalities and geographies. The CEO told Endpoints News that he aims to have at least the first drug brought in-house within a year. The global asset search ranges from compassionate-use programs run by academics to biotechs that can’t get to market on their own, and to large pharmaceutical companies that have shelved rare disease drug candidates, Grass said. The biotech will look to get a mixture of assets spanning post-proof-of-concept to registrational-stage drugs so that Mendra can commercialize them on a staggered schedule rather than all at once, he said. Grass called Mendra a “contrarian” bet. “Venture, and private capital in general, is favoring early M&A takeouts by pharma,” Grass said. “They don’t really have an appetite to fund assets all the way to commercialization, which is where orphan drugs really demonstrate their value the best … So there are a lot of underappreciated assets out there.” He said commercial costs are “quite large compared to the revenue” for orphan drugs, so the company will need more than one asset to “make it viable.” With multiple assets and at least one commercial-stage medicine, “you can tap public markets for lower-cost capital to grow the business,” Grass said. Mendra will likely “roll right into a Series B once we lock on to some interesting assets,” he said. Despite having no drugs in its pipeline yet, Mendra already has a chief commercial officer. Grass has enlisted Jeff Ajer, who led commercial operations at BioMarin until 2024. The C-suite also includes chief technology officer Lalarukh Haris Shaikh, who is a former EVP of life sciences and aerospace at Palantir Technologies. Grass previously led Escient Pharmaceuticals to a $750 million exit to Incyte in 2024 and steered Modis Therapeutics to a $250 million upfront sale to Zogenix in 2019. He built up his rare disease chops over a 15-year career at BioMarin. Mendra will take a different path than Grass and Ajer’s former employer. BioMarin grew up in a different age of the biotech industry, having planted its roots in the late 1990s. The California drugmaker is currently revamping itself under new leadership. “We don’t want to build an early R&D organization. We don’t want to be doing basic biology. And we don’t really want to be building expensive in-house manufacturing capabilities,” Grass said. He said BioMarin had to do that 20 years ago because “the contract manufacturing ecosystem didn’t exist to make these” treatments. Patient identification tools, including those that tap the power of AI, should help with streamlining the clinical trials process and improving market access. Other biotechs are deploying AI tools for similar strategies. Formation Bio teamed up with Sanofi and OpenAI to improve patient recruitment. “If you’re starting this from scratch, there’s an opportunity to do this in a different way than if you’re a 20-year-old company and you’ve got data sitting in an old software system on pharmacovigilance,” Grass said. He’s particularly reminded of a short report on BioMarin when the drugmaker was launching Naglazyme in the mid-2000s. The treatment was greenlit for a rare lysosomal storage disorder called mucopolysaccharidosis VI, or MPS VI. “The title of the short report was, ‘You have to go to Mars to find a patient with MPS VI,'” Grass recalled. “It turns out you didn’t really have to go to Mars. You just had to go to Brazil, Turkey and Germany.” With advancements in technology over the past two decades, Grass said they wouldn’t run into those patient identification hurdles today. Today’s tools, he said, will help biotechs like Mendra “enroll clinical trials faster with larger patient sets” and “have better product launches.” They should also be able to give Wall Street a more precise estimate of disease prevalence today than they could 20 years ago.

Mendra launched on Thursday with $82 million in its coffers from an oversubscribed series A financing that it will use to acquire and develop experimental rare disease assets. The funding was co-led by OrbiMed, 8VC and 5AM Ventures, with participation from Lux Capital and Wing VC."We are building Mendra to deliver high-potential rare disease medicines more effectively to patients on a global scale," said Joshua Grass, co-founder and CEO of Mendra. The biopharma aims to modernise the development and commercialisation of rare disease therapies by employing AI to accelerate patient identification, clinical trial enrollment and access to global markets. "By combining deep rare disease expertise with AI-driven capabilities…we believe we can accelerate timelines, improve execution and expand access for these underserved patients," said Grass. Having most recently served as CEO of Escient Pharmaceuticals — which was acquired by Incyte in 2024 — Grass previously oversaw a $30-million series A financing at Modis Therapeutics and its subsequent takeover by Zogenix. Prior to this, Grass spent 15 years at BioMarin Pharmaceutical, where he was instrumental in building the company's rare disease portfolio.Joining Grass at Mendra — which was founded in 2025 — is another former BioMarin exec, with Jeff Ajer taking on the role of chief commercial officer at the startup.