Takeda to Acquire Envoy Therapeutics, Inc for .$140MM, which includes an up-front payment and progress-dependent, preclinical milestone payments.

Envoy is a privately-held drug discovery company focused on finding new drugs with superior efficacy and fewer side effects than existing treatments. The company’s proprietary bacTRAP technology^® combines innovative genetic engineering with molecular biology techniques for labeling and extracting the protein-making components of specific types of cells. The technology is especially powerful in the brain where many hundreds of cell types are intermingled but is applicable to therapeutic areas beyond the central nervous system (CNS). Takeda’s corporate venture arm, Takeda Ventures, Inc. (TVI), participated in Envoy’s series A financing in October 2009 for a 12.5% ownership