SCI Ventures Marks Transformative First Year
SCI Ventures, a groundbreaking philanthropy initiative co-founded by the Reeve Foundation, is marking one year of bold progress toward curing spinal cord injury (SCI). As the first fund of its kind solely focused on breakthrough therapies for SCI, SCI Ventures is accelerating the path from discovery to real-world impact for the next generation of treatments.
Since its launch in June 2024, the evergreen fund has raised over $30 million and built a portfolio of seven early-stage companies. Backed by the Reeve Foundation and leading SCI foundations across the U.S. and Europe, and guided by world-renowned neuroscientists, SCI Ventures targets near-term functional improvement, while also backing the ultimate goal of biological repair of the spinal cord.
Most recently, SCI Ventures invested in and partnered with Healx – a pioneer in AI-powered drug discovery – to identify new treatments for SCI. The collaboration leverages Healx’s cutting-edge platform to prioritize AI-enabled target discovery and drug repurposing, aiming to dramatically accelerate the timeline from scientific insight to clinical application.
A defining strength of SCI Ventures is catalyzing the jump from bench science to first-in-human trials, leveraging its own capital and expertise to attract substantial additional private co-investment. Recent proof points include EG 427 — now enrolling patients in a first-in-human trial of its gene therapy for dysfunctional bladder, a debilitating complication of SCI and Axonis Therapeutics development of an oral drug advanced to a clinical trial for neuropathic pain, another major priority for the SCI community. This Axonis asset also shows promise for motor-function recovery. These successes underscore SCI Ventures’ ability to unlock additional investment and accelerate promising therapies into the clinic.
SCI Ventures marries philanthropy with the discipline of venture capital. The vehicle reinvests 100% of its returns into additional high-potential companies to keep financing innovation in a sustained way and continue to deliver more options for people living with paralysis. To learn how your support for the Reeve Foundation helps advance this transformative work, please contact Denise Andersen at [email protected].
