Category Archives: Portfolio news

Not every deal is a winner, and unfortunately On-Q-ity wasn’t.  After a few years of hammering away at its diagnostic business case, the board decided to wind the company down back in November and we are just completing the sale

Immunokinase-directed therapeutics have been one of the highest returning drug classes for biotech investors in recent years.  Drugs that inhibit the JAK family, BTK, Syk, and PI3Kd have all generated impressive clinical validation in B- and T-cell diseases, and created

Today Celgene announced the acquisition of Avila Therapeutics for $350M upfront and up to $575M in future milestones.  Congratulations to the Avila team!  For those of us involved in the story, we certainly think Celgene’s got itself a great deal.

Corporate venture capital’s role in the new biotech ecosystem couldn’t be understated today.  They are a major syndicate partner for those of us in the early stage arena, and we couldn’t power up our startups without them. I’ve written on

Today we announced a new strategic alliance with Shire Pharmaceutical’s to identify new opportunities for early stage venture creation aimed at addressing rare genetic diseases.  This collaboration brings unique expertise from Shire’s Human Genetic Therapies group together with our company creation

Like many technologies that move from hot discoveries on the cover of Nature to the practical ugly sausage-making of drug development, RNA-based therapeutics have been widely derided of late.  It seems everyone from Wall Street to Pharma to venture capital

We all recognize that realizing value from a biotech company has historically been geared to one of two paths, IPO or M&A, and that they’ve both been getting tougher.  There’s been a number of articles recently about some of the

Today we announced a novel alliance with Monsanto to identify new life science technologies and explore the potential for creating/investing in new seed-stage startups around them.  It’s an exciting collaboration that brings a complementary set of interests, capabilities, and access

Jus Singh doesn’t look much like James Bond, but he’s nearly as cool (see pic below). He’s the founder of Avila Therapeutics, a company we’ve backed that is focused on the discovery of targeted covalent inhibitors. When he and Roy

Bill Gates has just backed one our new startups - Nimbus Discovery LLC – as part of an extension to the seed tranche. Here’s the press release. It might come as a surprise to some, but Bill Gates has been a long-time