Category Archives: Biotech investment themes

“May you live in interesting times” – or so goes the phrase. In 1966, RFK Jr’s father famously used that quote to capture the turbulence of the times, and continued: “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They

Today’s market likes products. Platforms aren’t in vogue anymore. Investors, especially in the public markets, only want late stage de-risked assets. Pharma only seems to be buying these kinds of asset. VCs need to focus on clinical stage companies. Or

Venture creation in biotech is witnessing a sustained contraction. After the pandemic bubble’s over-indulgence, the venture ecosystem appears to have reset its pace of launching new startups. According to the latest Pitchbook data, venture creation in biotech hit its slowest

By Haojing Rong and Aimee Raleigh, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC This blog post is the second in a series on key diligence concepts and questions. If you missed the intro blog post yesterday, click

By Aimee Raleigh, Principal at Atlas Venture, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Ever wondered what goes into diligencing a new idea, program, company, or platform? While each diligence is unique and every investor will have

By Aimee Raleigh, Principal at Atlas Venture, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Just in time for new years’ reflections and resolutions, this year’s JPM felt like a refreshing burst of enthusiasm for a sector that

2023 couldn’t end fast enough for most of us in biopharma; its been a tough year in the capital markets, and the industry is facing it’s fair share of headwinds. Fortunately, despite all that, great science and medicine continues to

By Bob Clarke, CEO of Kinaset Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC As we enter the final leg of 2023, navigating the investment market in biotech continues to be fraught with twists and turns. The

We just held our first-ever, and hopefully only, virtual Atlas Venture Annual Meeting for our investors. Although science is winning in this pandemic, we’re clearly not back to normal yet so felt it prudent to shift to a virtual format.

It’s that time of year again when we pause to reflect on the state of the industry – and there’s more to focus on in biopharma today than just the drug pricing debate. As I described last year, we host

The startup paradigm for the creation and funding of new biotech companies has evolved enormously over the past two decades. Recently there’s been a pair of articles from Tech VCs about applying alternative models of company creation (here, here) to

At the end of every year, we host both our Atlas Venture Annual Meeting for our fund investors (Limited Partners) and our Atlas Retreat for senior industry executives.  As a kickoff for these two meetings, we typically open with a

Over the past six years, the biotech sector has experienced an incredible run of IPOs, reflecting the longest and largest “open window” for new offerings. Much has been written about post-IPO performance here and elsewhere, but there’s been little discussion

Most conventional small molecule drugs engage directly with the engine of a protein’s function, aiming to often turning off an enzymatic activity associated with a disease. These drugs bind and compete against the natural substrate of the protein at what

Last week, AvroBio and Magenta Therapeutics priced their IPOs on the same night. Less than three months earlier, Unum Therapeutics priced its IPO. All three biotech companies are emerging leaders in the cell and gene therapy space, broadly defined. They

Like all avid fly fishermen, I can recount many stories about the big ones that got away. The same goes for my experience in venture capital… as I’ve certainly missed some big ones. With the acquisition of Juno Therapeutics by

This blog was written by Michael Gladstone, Principal at Atlas Venture, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Biotech newsflow came out the gate a little slow in 2018 (though it appears it may be speeding up

Four years ago, in December 2013, I highlighted Atlas’ seed-led venture creation model by walking through our Fund IX Seed Class of 2013.  Only a short 1400 days ago, reading it again last week made it seem like an eternity.

Back in the summer, I got the call that no biotech venture investor wants to get. On the morning of August 8th, I received an urgent text of “can you talk now?” quickly followed with a call. I learned then

The term “undruggable” has entered common industry vernacular over the past two decades to describe biologic targets that couldn’t be addressed via narrow conventional pharmacologies involving catalytic-site inhibitors and antibodies. The “druggable genome” historically included intracellular catalytic proteins, (e.g., enzymes

Neuroscience has quietly become a hot space for startups. Across a range of neurologic conditions, contrarian investors have been fueling entrepreneurs to discover and develop novel therapeutic strategies. Earlier this week, two Atlas-founded companies, Rodin Therapeutics and Disarm Therapeutics, both announced

This blog was written by Adam Rosenberg, CEO of Rodin Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. After a long, challenging period for CNS R&D – marked by late-stage clinical failures, mass layoffs, and limited early-stage

We’re excited to announce two new collaborations today from our neuroscience portfolio – Quartet with Merck (here) and Rodin with Biogen (here) – to advance their programs into early clinical development.  These are both young companies that we helped create

This blog was written by Rosana Kapeller, CSO of Nimbus Therapeutics, as part of the “From the Trenches” feature of LifeSciVC. Early this week, Intercept Pharmaceuticals announced the much awaited design of their Ph. 3 clinical trial of Obeticholic Acid (OCA)

This blog was written by Michael Gladstone, Principal at Atlas Venture, as part of the “From the Trenches” feature of LifeSciVC. “A big asset of VC’s is pattern recognition. It is also often our biggest liability.”  An apt observation tweeted by

Venture capital investing in biotech has long been hard to disaggregate: how much goes to “early stage” vs “late stage”, how much goes to CNS vs oncology, discovery vs Phase 3, etc… Today BIO’s David Thomas and Chad Wessel have

Similar to this time last year, when IPOs were capturing everyone’s attention, M&A in biotech has been delivering real value.  This morning HBM Partners released their outstanding report on BioPharma M&A in 2014 (here), and the conclusions are in line

This blog was written by Ankit Mahadevia, CBO of Rodin Therapeutics and Spero Therapeutics, as part of the “From the Trenches” feature of LifeSciVC. There’s an ebb and flow in our business around interest in specific therapeutic areas; hot TAs such

Getting high quality analyst coverage of your company as a recently minted IPO is important for communicating the rationale and excitement around your story. Thoughtful analysts can evangelize (or punish) companies they believe in (or not). But understanding the relationship

Translating breakthrough science into breakthrough medicines is a daunting task.  It’s also worth every nail-biting minute waiting for the next result that brings you closer to helping a patient in need.  We started miRagen based on some amazing laboratory results

On January 9th, 2014, Intercept Pharmaceuticals (ICPT) released a very interesting piece of news regarding their Phase 2 FLINT (Farnesoid X Receptor Ligand Obeticholic Acid in Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis Treatment) trial.  FLINT, a test of their FXR agonist obeticholic acid (OCA)

With today’s announcement of Roche’s deal with Spero Therapeutics LLC (here), and last month’s news regarding Biogen’s deal with Ataxion (here), we’ve added further momentum to our strategy of working closely with larger BioPharma partners to create innovative “external R&D”

As an early stage biotech investor, the future of the industry and its structure are clearly important things to think about – especially since most of the drug programs our new startups are working on won’t get launched, if they

Tis the season for reflecting and predicting, so I figured I’d follow the custom and share some of my thoughts about the state of biotech in 2013 and the year to come. Reflections on 2013. The Biotech IPO Returns.  This

Last week, Atlas Venture closed Fund IX at $265M, as reported this morning by Dan Primack.  We set out to raise $250M, and closed above-target with great support from our existing LP’s and some great new ones.  With this closing,

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

Venture capital is often called an apprenticeship business in large part because experience matters and takes time to accumulate.  But successful firms are able to translate and transfer experiential wisdom through institutional memory, which involves codifying what works and what

The numbers are in on the 2012 Pharma/Biotech M&A performance, at least according to our friends at HBM Partners.  They’ve released another well-annotated deal report and database. The quick summary from a venture-backed biotech perspective: it was a good year

Most of the news flow around the JPM Healthcare conferences centers around the main event: public companies presenting their earnings forecasts, R&D updates, new partnering deals, and the like.  There’s also a small private company track at JPM, and there are

Innovation paid dividends in 2012.  We often debate the relative “innovation quotient” of the companies we evaluate and invest in here at Atlas, and of the biomedical sector as a whole. The basic premise we hold is that high innovation