Ambrosia Biosciences launches with former Array BioPharma chemists

Ambrosia Biosciences has launched with a $16 million series A financing round led by BVF Partners and Boulder Ventures. Ambrosia researchers are developing small-molecule, GLP-1–based drugs for metabolic disorders and weight loss. The compounds will target incretins and class B G protein-coupled receptors, but the company is not ready to elaborate much more, according to Nick Traggis, the president and chief operating officer.

Ambrosia’s 15-person scientific staff is composed almost entirely of former Array BioPharma employees who Pfizer laid off when they closed their research facility in Boulder, Colorado, in June of this year. “That’s an incredibly large world-class group of medicinal chemists and biologists that were made available to the market,” Traggis says.

The company raised a stealth seed round in March, but now the official launch comes just 5 months later. Traggis says the Array closure “really poured the gasoline on the fire for us to be able to start Ambrosia with a really, really top-notch team of chemists and biologists.”

According to Traggis, Ambrosia’s current goals are to present its first preclinical data sets near the end of 2025 and then file its first investigational new drug application with the US Food and Drug Administration around the end of 2026.

Ambrosia will use the new cash to establish operations in Boulder, where the team is already working. “At this stage, what I’m most proud of is that we were able to take bad news for the local community and its shutdown of this R&D site and find a place for a good chunk of that staff to land on their feet and be part of a new cool project,” Traggis says. “Pfizer’s decision is definitely our gain.”