Topic

Venture Capital

21
Jul
2015

How Are Biotech VCs Performing in the Boom? You’d Be Surprised (Part 2)

Yesterday, I published the first half of a two-part series on biotech venture fund performance in the boom. That story included data from venture funds backed by public employees in three states–Pennsylvania, California, and Hawaii. Today, I’m following up with more disclosures from funds in Washington and North Carolina, plus the big California fund that invests retirement savings for schoolteachers.
20
Jul
2015

How Are Biotech VCs Performing in the Boom? You’d Be Surprised

The biotech boom has been good to many people, but especially to venture capitalists. Many can point to winners in their portfolios. They have seized the moment to raise new funds, collect even bigger management fees, and double down on more cool science and technology companies. As I reported here in March, a few firms, such as The Column Group...
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20
Apr
2015

Hungry for Cash, Academia Reaches For a Bigger Piece of Biotech Action

Cash is gushing through the pharmaceutical industry at the same time its allies in academia are scraping for every nickel. The gap between these haves and have-nots is wide and getting wider. But at least in a couple recent cases, the poor people in academia have figured out clever ways to get a piece of the biotech action, at least...
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9
Apr
2015

Which Big Public Investors Are ‘Crossing Over’ Into the Private Arena?

Big-time money managers on Wall Street have all heard of biotech giants like Amgen, Biogen, Celgene, and Gilead Sciences. Those stocks are part of many diversified portfolios. But funds with really deep pockets, as one of my editors used to say, see the rest of biotech as “a bunch of little companies nobody has ever heard of.” Not anymore. As...
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18
Mar
2015

Third Rock’s Revolution Medicines Tears Apart Antifungals, Atom By Atom

Mother Nature has provided scientists with a lot of odd chemical structures that work as drugs, and offers inspirational templates for new drugs. But good drugs derived from scorpion venom, tree bark, and other strange sources aren’t easily cooked up in the lab. Now a group from the University of Illinois, backed by Third Rock Ventures, says it has hit...
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23
Feb
2015

Who Is Poised To Go Public in 2015, and Who Isn’t?

This is the greatest bull market ever for biotech IPOs, which everyone reading this surely knows. If Dr. Seuss were around, he’d ask something like: “How long can it go? Nobody knows.” Renaissance Capital counted 102 healthcare IPOs last year, more than one-third of all the new stock offerings in the U.S. An infusion of more than $9 billion flowed to...
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12
Feb
2015

Video: Alnylam’s John Maraganore and Canaan’s Julie Papanek at BIO CEO

Biotech is undoubtedly one of the most volatile businesses on the planet. John Maraganore of Alnylam knows that well. The CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has been there for the whole classic biotech roller coaster ride. Back in the early 2000s, scientists were electrified by the possibilities to treat the untreatable with RNA interference drug technology. Then, pharma companies ran for...
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