Archive for the ‘startup’ Category
May
10
Posted under
Atlas Venture,
Blog,
Bob Radie,
CLS Capital,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Egalet,
Funding,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
morphine,
pain drugs,
Pharmaceuticals,
R&D,
startup,
Startups,
Universities,
VC,
Videos by rmcbride
Pain med developer Egalet has found a new investor for a second-round financing and hired former Eli Lilly ($LLY) employee Bob Radie as president and CEO. CLS Capital has joined the company's previous investors--Altas Venture, Omega Funds, Sunstone Capital and Index Ventures--and the company raised $14.3 million in a Series B round of financing.
With the influx of capital, the company plans to move ahead with late-stage studies of its lead anti-pain treaments, which include an extended-release formulation of morphine, according to the startup's website. The company has drug-delivery tech that enables opioids and other meds to be delivered gradually and stymie abuse of the drugs.
Radie, the new CEO, previously served as chief executive of Topaz Pharmaceuticals, which a unit of Sanofi ($SNY) scooped up late last year to acquire its anti-lice treatment. His nearly 30-year career in the biopharma industry includes stints at TransMolecular, where he was CEO, Morphoteck, Vicuron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly.
"With the funds raised and Bob's appointment, Egalet is well positioned to move through the final stage of development with its lead abuse-resistant pain programs," Atlas partner Jean-Francois Formela, Egalet's chairman, said in a statement. "With the increase in abuse of pain medications and the increasingly restrictive regulation and oversight of pain medications, there is a growing need for the Egalet's abuse-resistant opioids in development."
- here's the release
May
07
Posted under
Blog,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Eli Lilly,
Esanex,
Funding,
Lilly Ventures,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
Pharmaceuticals,
R&D,
startup,
Startups,
Universities,
VC,
Videos by rmcbride
A secretive startup at Lilly Ventures in Indianapolis has grabbed $4.6 million of a documented $15 million round of equity financing, MedCity News reported, citing SEC documents. The recently founded Esanex doesn't appear to have a website or a publicly known research focus, but the startup does appear to have resources from drug giant Eli Lilly's ($LLY) $200 million venture unit. According to MedCity News, Lilly Ventures partner Steven Hall is identified as the young company's chief executive. Report
Mar
20
Posted under
Biotech Venture Capital,
Blog,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Funding,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
Pharmaceuticals,
Sofinnova,
startup,
Startups,
Universities,
VC,
Videos,
Wellcome Trust by Ryan McBride
The U.K's wealthiest charity has blueprinted big plans to back fledgling therapeutics and diagnostics companies with a brand new £200 million ($317 million) fund. And the Wellcome Trust has appointed veterans of the venture game to lead the new business, temporarily dubbed Project Sigma.
The charity plans to dig into its deep pockets and bankroll the life sciences fund from its endowment, which ranks among the world's largest. While already backing other venture outfits, Wellcome Trust said the new fund provides an additional mechanism to support early-stage companies that can help usher in new diagnostics and therapies for patients.
Wellcome has tapped Martin Murphy, a former partner at MVM Life Science Partners, to lead its new biotech fund as CEO. And industry veteran Nigel Keen, founder of Deltex Medical, has been named chairman of the fund. The charity plans to ditch the working title Project Sigma and reveal the business name in the near future.
Led by industry heavyweights such as Sir Chris Evans (photo), biotech crusaders in the U.K. have mounted several journeys to boost investment in young drug developers. Evans, as FierceBiotech reported last week, has succeeded in getting the Welsh government to earmark £50 million for a new life sciences fund, with industry players expected to pony up even more to bankroll the endeavor. And after Enterprise Ireland and the National Pensions Reserve Fund backed its new $440 million biotech fund, Sofinnova Ventures plans to open shop in Ireland and hunt for investment opportunities there, Xconomy reported Monday.
Any new mechanisms for early-stage biotech funding, of course, are going to be met with cheers in the startup world. Newly hatched biotechs can struggle to find new funding, and venture capital players have been called conservative in their investments in drug developers in recent years. Still, there are promising signs of life for early-stage biotech investments in the U.K.
We'll be watching to see how these developments manifest themselves into new rounds of financing for biotech startups.
- here's Wellcome Trust's release
- see the Reuters report
​Related Articles:
Sir Chris Evans inspires creation of a £100M Welsh biotech fund
VC dollars flowing into Europe
Biotech VC climate warmer than some thought
Feb
22
Posted under
Biogen Idec,
Biotech IPO,
Biotech Venture Capital,
Blog,
Companies,
Diagnostics,
Funding,
Medical Devices,
Medical Supply,
Mergers and Acquisitions,
Pharmaceuticals,
startup,
Startups,
Universities,
Videos by Ryan McBride
Holding most of the cards in M&A deals, drugmakers have increasingly scored biotech buyouts with much of the payments to startup investors delayed unit certain goals are met. The danger of the deals is that investors face slim odds of raking in all the milestone payments tied to the buyouts, as many of the programs that must succeed in order for payments to be made often fail. One biotech backer from Atlas Venture has taken a stab at calculating the actual earnings from a sample of such deals.
Plucking numbers from a variety of public sources and data from individuals, Atlas Partner Bruce Booth writes that 24% of milestone payments were actually received from buyout deals involving drug developers from January 2005 to December 2009. Those payments amounted to $1.7 billion to biotech investors, and some of the milestone money remains on the table as related programs advance, but the figure illustrates how the big "potential" buyout figures seldom become real dollars. His research shows that 40% of the milestones from those 35 deals could be collected, yet 37% of the payments are out the window because programs to which they are tied have been tossed.
The so-called "biobucks" tied to these deals are often overlooked in the press after the deals are closed, but biotech investors obviously pay close attention to how much money they will actually receive from M&A events. With VCs dropping from the ranks of potential sources of capital, hope that the "biobuck"-laden deals bear fruit for these investors and entice them to make more bets on biotech startups. With IPOs hard to come by for small drug developers, drugmakers might offer venture backers their best shot at returns on their biotech investments.
Booth and his firm are among the ranks of VCs still waiting for big checks from drugmakers that have bought their portfolio companies. In the past two months, the VC firm has seen two of its drug developers--Stromedix and Avila--scooped up in deals that provided only part of the total payouts upfront. For instance, Biogen Idec ($BIIB) snapped up Stromedix for $75 million upfront and the lion's share of the potential payout, $487.5 million, tied to the success of the startup's fibrosis programs. Booth is asking his counterparts in the industry to help him compile a more complete picture of how much in the way of biobucks they are actually pocketing.
- get more from Booth's blog
Related Articles:
Biogen's lead dealmaker makes case against corporate VC
Big drugmakers lend hand in forming biotech startups
Biotech IPOs: It's just a flesh wound
The best of times, the worst of times?