Funding profile · Substance use disorder therapeutics

EncepHeal Therapeutics

Every dollar on the public record is non-dilutive. There is no Form D, no priced round, and no NIH award after June 2020. Here is what the filings and award records show.

$793,836NIH award dollars obligated across four projects, FY2017 to FY2020
$3.3MPotential value announced for the 2020 Blueprint grant
$215,000North Carolina support, company-stated: $150,000 plus a $65,000 matching grant
$0Regulation D offerings on file with the SEC

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Dec 2015 to Jan 2016 Exclusive NIH patent license, not a financing Not disclosed NIDA technology transfer Federal Register
Apr 2017 NIDA SBIR Phase I, U43 DA043285 $304,217 NIDA NIH
May 2017 North Carolina Matching Grant $65,000 State of North Carolina Company news page
Oct 2017 North Carolina Biotechnology Center award, later described as a Small Business Research Loan $150,000 NCBiotech NCBiotech
Feb 2018 Phase I supplement $50,000 NIDA NIH
Feb 2019 Phase I supplement $99,999 NIDA NIH
Summer 2019 Y Combinator, batch S19 Not disclosed Y Combinator YCDB, NCBiotech
Jun 2020 Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network, U44 NS116931 $339,620 obligated; up to $3.3M announced NINDS administering, NIDA funding institute NIH + release
Any date Priced equity round None on record None named Not found

What the records show

EncepHeal Therapeutics, Inc. · NIH RePORTER · four awards, FY2017 to FY2020

First award
1U43DA043285-01A1, notice Apr 19, 2017
Awarded
$304,217 + $50,000 + $99,999 + $339,620
Total
$793,836 · average about $198,459 per award
Last award
1U44NS116931-01, notice Jun 26, 2020
Project window
May 1, 2017 to Dec 31, 2021
Principal investigator
Steven R. Childers on all four
Institutes
NIDA on the U43 series, NINDS on the U44 Blueprint project

NIH exclusive patent license L-226-2017 · Federal Register notices

Technology
Modafinil analogs at monoamine transporters, from US provisional 61/774,878 filed Mar 8, 2013, with national filings in the US, Europe, Australia and Canada
Inventors
Amy Hauck Newman, Jianjing Cao and colleagues at the NIDA Intramural Research Program
Notice of intent
80 FR 79595, Dec 22, 2015
Modification
82 FR 45865, Oct 2, 2017, widening the field of use and requiring a lead compound per indication
Confirmed by
Conflict of interest statement in J Pharmacol Exp Ther, Mar 2023

SEC EDGAR · no filings

Company search
No matching companies for EncepHeal
Full text search
Zero documents mentioning EncepHeal, all form types
Form D
None, in the company’s own name or any related vehicle
Retrieved
Sep 23, 2026

Reading the records

  1. The announced number and the obligated number differ by about ten times.The 2020 Blueprint award was reported as having a potential value of $3.3 million over four years. NIH RePORTER records $339,620 obligated, about 10 percent of that ceiling, and a project end date of Dec 31, 2021, eighteen months after the start. The Blueprint model explains part of the gap, since the program pays its own contractors rather than routing the money through the company. It does not explain the absence of any award in the remaining years of the stated window.
  2. Nothing on record dilutes anyone.Federal awards of $793,836 plus $215,000 of company-stated North Carolina support come to $1,008,836, and all of it is grant, loan or matching money. No priced equity round appears in any public filing.
  3. No Form D is not proof that no equity was sold.The company joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 batch, and NCBiotech reported in 2020 that EncepHeal “is also supported by an investment from the California-based seed money startup accelerator YCombinator”. Neither the amount nor the instrument is public. Issuers selling under Section 4(a)(2) file no Form D, and seed stage issuers often skip it, so the empty EDGAR record sets a floor of zero disclosed equity rather than a ceiling.
  4. One person carried both the science and the grants.Steven R. Childers, a Wake Forest professor emeritus who joined as chief research officer, is the named principal investigator on all four NIH awards. The entire federal funding record rests on one academic investigator.
  5. The award clock stopped before the data arrived.The last award notice is Jun 26, 2020 and the last project ended Dec 31, 2021. The peer reviewed primate study appeared in March 2023, after the funding ran out, and reported a modest effect for the lead candidate in one of three monkeys. No NIH award, publication or filing under the company name follows it.
  6. The license came with a deadline of its own.The 2017 Federal Register notice widened the licensed field of use on the condition that EncepHeal pick a lead compound for each indication, after which the rest of the library would become available to other licensees. A company that stops selecting leads loses optionality on the asset it was built around.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory No IND disclosed, no registered clinical trial, no FDA 510(k) or PMA record. Preclinical throughout. Public record
Intellectual property Exclusive NIH license to a NIDA modafinil analog family. No patents filed in the company’s own name were found. Public record
Evidence One PubMed indexed paper with company authors, Mar 2023, reporting a weak primate result for the lead compound. Peer reviewed
Revenue An SBIR directory profile listed a revenue range of $0.5M to $1M and 5 to 9 employees, edited Dec 2019. Not independently confirmed. Directory-stated
Web presence encepheal.com was serving a hosting suspension page by Dec 2022. Captures from 2024 onward show the domain carrying unrelated commercial content. Archive record
Team The Y Combinator founder bio describes the role in the past tense. Company-stated

What to watch

  • A Federal Register notice reassigning or terminating NIH license L-226-2017.
  • Any new NIH award to the company, or a new principal investigator on the existing project numbers.
  • A first Form D, which would be the earliest public sign of an equity financing.
  • Whether the NIDA compound family advances under a different sponsor. A newer atypical transporter inhibitor from the same intramural program was featured by NIDA in Dec 2025.

The EncepHeal Therapeutics story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Altay Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. A six person company in San Carlos drugging proteins the industry wrote off
  • Origami Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. A small San Diego company designing oral pills that strip the mutant huntingtin protein out of brain cells while leaving the normal protein alone
  • Promakhos Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. A two-person Boston biotech building an oral small molecule meant to switch the innate immune system back on in Crohn’s disease
  • Endpoint Health: Also in Therapeutics. A Palo Alto company that set out to rescue sepsis drugs the field had given up on, by finding the patients they actually help

Sources

  1. Public recordNIH RePORTER award records for EncepHeal Therapeutics, Inc.NIH · retrieved Sep 23, 2026
  2. Public recordProspective Modification of Exclusive Patent License, 82 FR 45865Federal Register · Oct 2, 2017
  3. Public recordSEC EDGAR company search and full text search for EncepHeal, no resultsSEC · Sep 23, 2026
  4. Peer reviewedJJC8-088 and JJC8-091 on Cocaine versus Food Choice in Rhesus MonkeysJ Pharmacol Exp Ther · Mar 2023
  5. Public recordInternet Archive capture history for encepheal.comInternet Archive · 2015 to 2026
  6. IndependentNC’s EncepHeal Lands NIH Grant to Treat Cocaine AddictionNorth Carolina Biotechnology Center · Jul 28, 2020
  7. IndependentEncepheal Therapeutics Inc profile, officers and revenue rangeInknowvation · profile edited Dec 9, 2019
  8. CompanyEncepHeal in the press page listing the 2017 North Carolina awardsencepheal.com, Internet Archive capture · 2021
  9. CompanyEncepheal Therapeutics company page and founder bioY Combinator · accessed Sep 23, 2026

Compiled from SEC, NIH, Federal Register and other public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. Award amounts reflect obligations recorded in NIH RePORTER and may not capture contractor services paid directly by the Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in EncepHeal Therapeutics. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.