Cure Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm founded in 2021 by a trio of veteran biotech investors, has brought in two former executives from Sage Therapeutics to prepare them for investing in neuroscience startups.
The VC firm has hired Jeff Jonas, Sage’s former chief executive, and Al Robichaud, Sage’s former chief scientific officer, as partners, the team told STAT exclusively. The two men worked together from 2013 until 2022, when Jonas left to start a biotech incubator with funding from investment giant CBC Group. Jonas left that project last September. “We had differing visions about incubation,” he said.
Robichaud left Sage Therapeutics around the same time. It had always been his intention to leave the company after the biotech’s drug for postpartum depression, Zurzuvae, was approved, he said. Zurzuvae was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in August, but it didn’t exactly go as hoped. Sage had asked regulators to approve the drug as a treatment for both postpartum and major depression, the latter of which has a much larger sales potential. But the agency only approved it for postpartum women, and slapped a boxed warning label on the medication, the FDA’s strongest caution, noting that the drug can cause impairment due to sedative effects.