Editor’s Take: Demand is growing for answers to development challenges that are drawn directly from human data.
Verge Labs and Tenacia Biotechnology have a strategic platform partnership to advance Tenacia’s pipeline for central nervous system (CNS) diseases.
The agreement binds Verge to leveraging its platform, as well as proprietary multimodal human tissue data, to prioritize select targets. By doing so, Verge will help Tenacia ground its development decisions, combined with prior team expertise, in human brain biology.
A Large CNS Dataset
Verge Labs boasts more than 12,000 brain transcriptomes across 6500 patients, with matched single-cell, proteomic, genomic, and clinical data. This makes for one of the largest proprietary multimodal CNS patient datasets of its kind.
In May 2026, Verge introduced a platform-first commercial model for the company, under which this is Verge’s first collaboration. The partnership with Tenacia is also the first of several CNS engagements Verge is undertaking.
Advantages of Verge Platform
Using Verge’s platform, the company says, drug developers can answer translational questions determining likelihood of program success in the clinic. Demand is growing, Verge says, for answers—at points in development where programs fail—drawn directly from human data.
Among questions the platform can answer: how targets behave in human tissue, or which preclinical models best predict human response. Verge says it can discern a target’s mechanism of action, what biomarkers track its activity, and which patients will respond.
Tenacia Responds
Chen-Bing Guan, Tenacia’s Vice President of Translational Medicine, said these capabilities fill a gap.
“Verge has assembled the human tissue data and AI models the CNS field has been missing,” Guan said. “Their platform complements Tenacia’s internal development capabilities as we continue to compete on innovation and grow our CNS pipeline [globally].”
“Tenacia is building one of the most differentiated CNS pipelines in the field,” Alice Zhang, Verge Co-Founder and CEO, said. “They came to us to ground their target decisions in patient data. That can be the difference between a CNS program that works and one that fails. It’s exactly what we built the platform to do.”