Kallyope Inc., a New York-based biotech company focused on developing a platform to influence the brain via the gut, has secured its first investment, a $44 million series A financing to explore the untapped therapeutic and nutritional potential of the bidirectional communication channel. From its lab, overlooking the Empire State Building, it expects to develop its own therapeutic programs in parallel with a platform for translating gut-brain biology into a range of new therapeutic and nutritional programs. But it is "not interested in therapeutics that are just incremental," CEO Nancy Thornberry, a veteran of Merck & Co. Inc., told BioWorld Today.