Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #7

More money, more problems to solve

More well thought out work can be found at — https://axial.substack.com/

Axial invests and partners in early-stage life sciences companies. If you or someone you know has a great idea or company in life sciences, Axial would be excited to get to know you and possibly invest in your vision and company — info@axialsprawl.com

Life Sciences Financings and Commentary #7 - May 9, 2020 - May 15, 2020

Financings

Number of deals: 18 & Total capital invested: $340.4M

- BurnAlong raised $4M from CR2 Ventures and DM Wellness to commercialize their corporate wellness app focused on telemedicine. Despite the generic-style of the product, if the company can get the corporate contracts, that’s a pretty nice lock-in to get. There’s a lot of competition here and some really great products already on the market.

- Carbon Health raised $26M from DCVC to extend their Series B to help the company to extend its primary care product to COVID-19 treatment. Carbon is doing some great work building out mobile clinics to diagnose COVID-19. In general, the business is focused on unbundling primary, urgent, and now virtual care - a really tough task. Historically, focused digital health companies have been rewarded.

 - Dyno Therapeutics raised $9M co-led by Polaris and CRV along with announcing two AAV licensing deals with Novartis and Sarepta. The business is focused on using machine learning to design new AAV capsids for gene therapies. Dyno’s business model is similar to Regenxbio - https://axial.substack.com/p/axial-regenxbio. More information on Dyno’s round can be found here - https://www.wsj.com/articles/dyno-therapeutics-signs-two-deals-that-could-rake-in-2-billion-11589236335

 - GreenLight Biosciences raised $17M from Baird Capital and Xeraya Capital to use its RNA manufacturing platform for COVID-19 vaccines - https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/12/greenlight-biosciences-raises-17m-to-ramp-mrna-production-for-covid-19-vaccine-candidate-trials/

- Immunai raised $20M co-led by Viola Ventures and TLV Partners to build a single-cell sequencing platform to read the immune system. Pretty exciting work - they probably need to figure out where to point their engine. Oncology like Adaptive? Sepsis like Inflammatix?

 -  Kriya Therapeutics raised $80.5M from a large syndicate of investors: QVT, Dexcel Pharma, Foresite Capital, Bluebird Ventures, Narya Capital, Amplo, Paul Manning, and Asia Alpha. The company is focused on ingesting gene therapy IP to make drugs. The Ramaswamy brothers sure do know how to raise capital; QVT is helpful too.

- Lucid Lane raised $4M with Battery Ventures and AME Cloud Ventures co-leading to building a telemedicine product to treat patients with anxiety, substance abuse, and depression - https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/08/lucid-lane-has-developed-a-service-to-get-patients-off-of-pain-meds-and-avoid-addiction/

- Meru Health raised $8.1M led by The Foundry Group to build out their digital health product for mental health. This is an incredible business with a lot of similarities to Virta Health - https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2020/05/12/foundry-group-slack-backing-meru-health/#7ccb1a5b6110

- Modulus Discovery raised $25.5M from SBI Investments, Mizuho Capital, JAFCO, Keio Innovation Initiative, SMBC Venture Capital, Dai-ichi Life Insurance, UTokyo Innovation Platform, Mobile Internet Capital, Medifuture, Essential Pharma, and Fast Track Initiative to build out their computational drug discovery platform focused on small molecules and oncology.

- Monument raised $7.5M from Lerer Hippeau, Collaborative Fund, Red Sea Ventures, NextView Ventures, Corigin Ventures, and Data Point Capital to build their telemedicine product for alcoholism - https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/11/people-are-in-the-fights-of-their-lives-with-alcohol-use-disorders-and-monument-wants-to-help/

- Nanit raised $21M from Jerusalem Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Rho to build their baby monitoring product focused on improving sleep quality.

- Neo Medical raised $13.4M led by 4FO Ventures to  commercialize their set of screws for spinal injuries from over 200 now to 14 generalized screws they have developed.

- Ophelia Health raised $2.7M from General Catalyst to build a telemedicine product to treat opioid addiction. The founder has an incredible story - https://www.forbes.com/sites/berenicemagistretti/2020/05/12/rehab-20-yc-backed-ophelia-raises-27-million-to-help-people-quit-opioids-without-the-burden-and-cost-of-rehab/#609f062d1ee8

- PathologyWatch raised $5M co-led by SpringTide Investments and Rock Creek Capital to build a software product to help dermatologists have real-time access to patient data and speed up slide analysis.

 - Pillar Biosciences raised $29.7M from ORI Healthcare Fund to scale up their NGS cancer diagnostic panels business. 

- QurAlis raised $42M co-led by LS Polaris Innovation Fund and Droia Ventures to bring their stem cell technology to ALS. Kaspar is great. The company is power by technology from the Eggan and Cohen Labs at Harvard.

 - Stellar Health raised $10M led by Point72 Ventures to build up their value-based payments product. Hard market with some great companies already in the mix - https://stellar.health/stellar-health-secures-10-million-in-series-a-funding-led-by-point72-ventures/

- Travecta Therapeutics raised $15M with SPRIM and Tikehau Capital co-leading the round. The company is focused on developing technologies to deliver drugs across the blood-brain barrier to treat CNS disorders.

Exits

Number of exits: 4 & Total exit value: At least $2B

- ADC Therapeutics raised $233M to develop their pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) for oncology - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1771910/000114036120009738/nt10009045x3_f1.htm

- Calliditas Therapeutics filed to raise $75M in an IPO to complete their phase III studies for their kidney disease medicine - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1795579/000110465920061227/tv538694-f1.htm

- Legend Biotech filed to raise $100M in an IPO to bring their BCMA cell therapies through the clinic as well as their other blood cancer and solid tumor programs along as well - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801198/000119312520141663/d884493df1.htm

- Pliant Therapeutics filed to raise a $86M IPO to develop their small molecule pipeline, in particular their phase II IPF program, treating fibrotic disease - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1746473/000119312520137876/d729258ds1.htm

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 -