Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #10
More money, more problems to solve
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Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #10 - May 30, 2020 - June 5, 2020
Financings
Number of deals: 23 & Total capital invested: $1.17B
- Alpha Tau Medical raised $26M from Shavit Capital, Medison Ventures, and OurCrowd to develop their alpha-particle radiotherapies in oncology.
- Arterys raised $28M co-led by Temasek and Benslie Investment Group to scale up their cloud products for medical imaging. The business model is almost like Quantopian or Algorithmia for medical images: create a marketplaces of models to analyze patient data. Privacy is a big issue here.
- Athira Pharma raised $85M led by Perceptive Advisors to develop new medicines for Alzheimer’s (AD) and other CNS diseases. Their lead asset is in phase 1 focused on AD. It’s not clear what MoA they are targeting.
- Base Genomics raised $11M from Oxford Sciences Innovation to build a better version of bisulfite sequencing to measure DNA methylation levels. This is particularly useful in liquid biopsies.
- Bigfoot Biomedical raised $55M led by Abbott to scale up their telemedicine products for diabetes patients.
- Cullinan Oncology raised $98.5M from MPM Capital and F2 Ventures to apply portfolio management tools to cancer drug development. Something like BridgeBio for oncology.
- Everest Medicines raised $310M from Janchor Partners, RA Capital Management, and Hillhouse Capital to make new medicines for patients in China.
- Ezra raised $18M led by FirstMark Capital to build early cancer screening products from full-body MRIs.
- Genor Biopharma raised $160M led by Hillhouse Capital to develop new antibodies for oncology - https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/hillhouse-genor-biopharma-190863/
- LanzaTech raised $50M from Suncor Energy, All Nippon Airways and Mitsui & Co. to develop their synthetic biology product to convert pollutants into chemical products.
- Meditrina raised $10M led by Deerfield to commercialize their women’s health product, Aveta system, to diagnose and treat endometrial polyps and uterine fibroids
- Nanox raised $51M led by SK Telecom to commercialize a new X-ray system that is significantly cheaper and portable.
- NodThera raised $55M led by Novo Ventures to make new drugs focused on chronic inflammation.
- Overjet raised $7.9M from a lot of investors to build software products to help dentists and payors analyze dental scans.
- PlusDental raised €32M led by Ping An Global Voyager to build telemedicine products for dentistry.
- PlushCare raised $23M led by Transformation Capital to build out their virtual primary care products.
- Prilenia Therapeutics raised $62.5M led by Forbion to make new medicines for neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases.
- Re-Vana Therapeutics raised $3.3M from ExSight Ventures, Visionary Ventures, InFocus Capital Partners, TechStart Ventures, Clarendon Fund Managers and Qubis to use their photo crosslinking technology to deliver biologics to the eye with sustained release.
- Shorla Pharma raised $8.3M led by Seroba Life Sciences to build a portfolio of new medicines first focusing on oncology.
- Syapse raised $30M led by Revelation Alpine to scale up their oncology analysis product for things like clinical trial recruitment, therapeutic use, and diagnostics - https://www.syapse.com/uploads/downloads/Syapse-Overview.pdf
- Tae Life Sciences raised $30M from ARTIS Ventures to further develop their oncology radiotherapies.
- Tictrac raised $7.5M led by Puma Private Equity to develop their employee well-being SaaS product - https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/02/tictrac-secures-7-5m-to-expand-employee-wellbeing-platform-as-wfh-baloons/
- Vara raised $7M led by OMERS Ventures to develop a machine learning-based product to detect breast cancer from mammography screens.
Exits
Number of exits: 1 & Total exit value: ~$200M
- Chondrial Therapeutics went public through a reverse merge with Zagen to become Larimar Therapeutics (LRMR). The company is developing new medicines for rare diseases with a phase 1 asset in Friedreich’s ataxia.
I used to play football a long time ago - I had some decent success mainly because of my teammates with some of them playing in the NFL. Every practice, every game was an existential fight. I’m not that athletic so every year some 6’4 monster would show up trying to take my spot. Similarly, all of these companies are fighting for their right to exist whether they raised $1M or $100M. Building a great business requires passion and focus. A really powerful and useful framework to lead groups of people and win was developed by Bill Walsh -