Early-stage biotech investor Flagship launches $270M fund

Posted under Biotech Venture Capital, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Flagship Ventures, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, Universities, Venture Capital fund, Videos by John Carroll

Flagship Ventures is expected to announce that it has reeled in $270 million for its new life sciences funds, putting it on track to launch a bevy of new biotechs to join its lengthy roster of startups. A key player in the early-stage R&D investment arena, Flagship managing partner and CEO Noubar Afeyan says Fund IV easily broke its $250 million goal.

The money will add around 20 new companies to Flagship's portfolio which will stand to gain anywhere from $10 million to $20 million in support from the venture group, Afeyan tells FierceBiotech at the J.P. Morgan conference in San Francisco. About eight of those companies--which will include a slate of sustainability tech companies in the mix with life sciences--will be founded in the firm's VentureLabs. And there's some money that's going to be earmarked for relatively late-stage efforts, he adds, to take advantage of the constricted financing environment that afflicts the industry.

"It is a tougher environment," says Afeyan. "The investment community that invests in our funds are markedly discouraged or pulling back." That said, Afeyan also notes that Flagship turned away $30 million before it closed the fund. And combined with the $200 million in healthcare cash Canaan unveiled for its new fund on Monday, the industry will end the week with a fresh pot of $470 million to compete for. 

Flagship is well known to many of the biotech industry's highest profile entrepreneurs, particularly the risk-takers in the academic community working on cutting-edge approaches to medicine. The fund has backed three creations from MIT's Robert Langer and Harvard's Omid Farokhza--Selecta Biosciences, Bind Biosciences and the newly launched Blend Therapeutics. It's also done well with startups like Agios Pharmaceuticals ($33 million Series A) and Adnexus Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb), with bets on ModeRNA (another Langer company) and more now in the works. All of them share two common traits, says Afeyan: A new approach to a mechanism of action or a platform that can deliver multiple drug products.

There's something else that all 35 companies in the portfolio share, he adds. None of them have done an option deal. And if he has his way, that record will remain unchanged for this new batch of companies coming under his wing.

- here's the Flagship release

Hungry biotechs make better partners for Big Pharma

Posted under Big Pharma, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Roche, skin cancer, Startups, Universities, Venture Capital fund, Videos by John Carroll

All that moaning and groaning you've been hearing about how hard it is to find venture backing for biotechs these days is evidently cause for considerable enthusiasm in pharma circles. The Wall Street Journal's Goran Mijuk says the funding crisis has helped Big Pharma companies like Roche do more deals with smaller upfronts. And that's allowed Roche to bring in hot new drugs like Zelboraf (Plexxikon) and vismodegib, another skin cancer treatment partnered with Curis. "We are doing around 50 to 60 partnership deals a year now, compared to around 30 deals per year before the crisis [of 2008]," Dan Zabrowski, head of Roche's drug partnership unit, tells the Journal. "Today, we start deals earlier with less upfront payments and share the risk with our partners." Report

Forbion unveils $50M fund for lightning round of late-stage investments

Posted under Biotech Venture Capital, Blog, Companies, Diagnostics, Forbion Capital Partners, Funding, Medical Devices, Medical Supply, Pharmaceuticals, Startups, Universities, Venture Capital fund, Videos by John Carroll

A little more than a year after it launched a €54 million fund to back some well advanced biotech and med device companies on both sides of the Atlantic, Forbion Capital Partners is back with $50 million in new chips to bet on late-stage portfolio companies. And the managing partner of the Dutch group says there's plenty more investment money out there for anyone who can show investors some quick returns in a field plagued by slow exits and frustrated developers competing for a shrinking pool of venture cash.

Forbion says it closed its first FCF 1 fund back in the fall of 2010 and earned cash on two quick exits: One for BioVex, which was bought out by Amgen ($AMGN) in a high profile billion-dollar deal, and the other for Pathway Medical, which went to Bayer MedRad for $125 million. Forbion, an experienced biotech investor, used the first round of FCF 1 funding to invest in 6 companies close to a perceived exit. Now it plans to follow up with a second lightning round of bets to see if it can score some more quick returns.

Forbion's first investment from the new fund went to Saddle Brook, NJ-based Circulite a little more than a week ago. The group joined a lineup of investors backing Circulite's $30 million Series D, which is earmarked to support the launch next year of what's being billed as the "world's smallest surgically implanted blood pump." And Forbion says there more money where this came from.

"We raised this second FCF 1 Co-Investment Fund in just a few weeks in difficult markets, reflecting the strong support Forbion enjoys from its current investor base, which includes many of the blue chip names active in the life sciences space," says Sander Slootweg, the managing partner. "Our experience is that investors like to put more capital behind the earmarked winners in our portfolio. As a result of our LPs being convinced of the exit potential of the respective FCF 1 portfolio companies, the Fund has ended up oversubscribed."

- here's the press release

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Forbion raises $240M investment fund