Medical Devices
We expect that the greatest opportunities in medical devices will occur in two areas: those where there is clear medical need, but no widespread adoption of a device-based solution, including drug-device combinations; or large markets where even low penetration rates can yield significant revenues. In the medical device sector, we believe that the most advantageous investment entry points are either before products have entered human testing, or when products have completed or nearly completed pivotal trials or are about to enter or are already on the market. The application of advances in communications technology and other technologies to medical devices is likely to accelerate. Through our investment and involvement in CardioMEMS, we are helping to establish the first generation of wireless implantable devices, and we see first hand the great interest of the major medical device companies in this growth area.Drug Development
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are under competitive pressure to increase overall R&D productivity both in terms of efficiency and speed to market. Three key creators of opportunity for venture capital investors are the need for large pharmaceutical companies to acquire clinical stage pharmaceuticals, the trend toward pharmaceutical services outsourcing, and an explosive understanding of the causes of disease and the pathways and interventions by which they can be affected. Patent expirations over the next ten years present a significant challenge for pharmaceutical companies. The revenue gap left as these products go off-patent cannot be filled by internal discovery and development projects, which on average take in excess of 12 years to complete. Thus, the pharmaceutical companies seek to acquire or in-license products, from pre-clinical through Phase II clinical trials, that have been developed by smaller companies, thereby creating an industry-wide opportunity. There is a particular demand for novel compounds that have reached the status of “proof of concept” in humans, usually defined as having completed a Phase IIa clinical trial.
Examples of Investments in Life Sciences:
Examples of investments that we have previously made in this sector
include the following companies:
- Collegium: Collegium is an early stage specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the development of proprietary, late stage pharmaceutical products for the rapidly growing reformulation market and related areas.
- Glycofi, Inc.: Developer of technology to address the biopharmaceutical industry's need for a safer, faster and more cost-effective therapeutic protein production. Glycofi's technology platform will alleviate this manufacturing bottleneck by engineering fungal expression systems that produce therapeutic proteins with human-like glycosylation structures.
- ILEX Oncology: Oncology drug development company strategically positioned to be a leading oncology-focused pharmaceutical company.
- Novalar Pharmaceuticals: Developer of a novel product in the area of local dental anesthesia. The company seeks to accelerate recovery in the soft tissue in procedures where patients would otherwise be inconvenienced by prolonged anesthetic effects.
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