Tortugas Neuroscience emerged from stealth on April 21, 2026, backed by $106 million in combined Seed and Series A financing, to develop four clinical-stage central nervous system assets in-licensed from Japanese drugmaker Eisai and Chinese pharmaceutical group Jiangsu Hansoh. The round was led by Cure Ventures with participation from The Column Group and AN Venture Partners, giving the San Diego-based company runway to complete Phase 2 studies across its lead programs.
The founding of Tortugas reflects a maturing trend in Western biotech: the strategic acquisition of ex-China or ex-Japan rights to compounds that have already cleared early-phase safety hurdles in Asian populations, then running U.S.-facing clinical programmes to generate data acceptable to the FDA and EMA. By entering at the clinical stage rather than the discovery phase, Tortugas compresses the drug development timeline and substantially de-risks the capital required for initial proof-of-concept.
The company’s four disclosed candidates are TRTL-107 for schizophrenia, TRTL-913 for tinnitus, TRTL-729 for focal epilepsy, and TRTL-118 for reversible encephalopathies, with TRTL-107 and TRTL-913 named as the two lead programmes entering Phase 2 trials. While full mechanism-of-action disclosures have not been made public, the focus on neural circuit modulation is consistent with mechanistic approaches being explored across the Eisai and Hansoh CNS portfolios.
The epilepsy program, TRTL-729, warrants particular attention. Focal epilepsy affects approximately 30 million people globally, with roughly 30% of patients failing to achieve seizure control with available antiseizure medications. That refractory population represents a substantial unmet need that newer mechanisms — moving beyond sodium channel blockade and GABA receptor potentiation — may better address. The glutamatergic and GABAergic signalling pathways remain actively targeted by multiple sponsors in early development, with the broader recognition that restoring inhibitory/excitatory balance, rather than simply suppressing excitation, may produce more durable outcomes.
Jeff Jonas, former CEO of Sage Therapeutics, leads Tortugas as chief executive. Jonas oversaw Sage’s development of brexanolone (Zulresso) and zuranolone (Zurzuvae), both GABAA receptor positive allosteric modulators for depression and postpartum depression. His track record in GABAergic pharmacology brings relevant platform expertise to the Tortugas pipeline.
The launch of Tortugas also signals continued investor appetite for CNS despite the sector’s historical attrition rates. With Supernus’s acquisition of Sage Therapeutics completed in 2025, and Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, and Biogen all actively building neuroscience pipelines, smaller CNS companies with credible Phase 2 assets are attracting premium capital.
