A venture capital firm focused on life sciences has closed a fund worth nearly $400 million that it plans to use to invest in biopharmaceutical companies.
San Francisco-based venBio Partners said Friday that it had closed its venBio Global Strategic Fund III, with a value of $394 million. The money was raised from existing and new investors, which include institutional investors like funds-of-funds, family offices, endowments and foundations, financial institutions, corporate pensions and pharmaceutical companies.
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“We remain committed to our founding strategy at venBio, namely to turn great science into impactful medicine,” said Corey Goodman, one of three managing partners of the fund, in a statement. “Our investment thesis, regardless of stage of company, remains to look for investment opportunities with a three- to five-year time horizon.”
In the last several months, investments in which venBio has taken part have included the $105 million Series C funding round raised by ALX Oncology, a company that is developing drugs that target the CD47 immune checkpoint; venBio, an existing investor, participated in that round, which Vivo Capital led. In early January, venBio led a $40 million Series B financing round in NorthSea Therapeutics, a Dutch company developing therapies for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH.
“We are grateful for the tremendous support we have received from our current investors during this fundraise,” said another venBio managing partner in charge of the new fund, Robert Adelman, in a statement. “We appreciate their ongoing commitment and welcome the broad range of new top-tier investors who have joined them.”
The third partner, Aaron Royston, highlighted venBio’s track record of building companies that have managed to get approved drugs on the market. One recent approval for a venBio portfolio company was Harmony Bioscience’s Wakix (pitolisant), which the Food and Drug Administration approved in August for treating adult patients with narcolepsy.
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“We remain committed to our founding strategy at venBio, namely to turn great science into impactful medicine,” Royston said in a statement.
Some other venture capital investment firms have been closing new funds as well. Last Thursday, ARCH Venture Partners and Flagship Pioneering announced they had closed funds with a combined value of more than $2.5 billion.
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