Brian Grulke United States

Volcano Capital is a family office/venture capital firm based in New York. The firm manages an evergreen fund that operates free from the constraints of traditional venture capital funds. The firm seeks to make seed, venture, and growth equity investments in early to mid-stage medical device companies, but will also consider secured debt to help revenue generating companies with short term cash flow issues. The firm will also consider pre-seed investments. The firm can allocate anywhere from $1M to $10M per company, but generally allocates around $8M. The firm typically does 3 rounds of financing with an initial investment of around $3M. The firm is geographically agnostic, but highly prefers to invest in companies that are based in the US. The firm seeks to make about 3-4 allocations in the next 6-9 months.

Volcano Capital is currently looking for medical device companies with a strong emphasis on products with a 510(k) regulatory pathway. In terms of subsectors, the firm is looking for products specifically in the areas of interventional radiology and cardiology, spine/orthopedics and minimally invasive surgery. The firm is generally opportunistic in terms of indication.

Volcano Capital
Associate 

Kristen Grumet United States

NSF Health Sciences offers clinical, regulatory, and quality consulting services across the total product lifecycle for innovative medical device, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology companies.  We specialize in helping companies balance FDA and worldwide regulatory requirements with their business needs. 

NSF Health Sciences

Christine Günther Germany

apceth is a privately held German Biotech company focused on the development and clinical implementation of innovative biopharmaceuticals based on cell and gene therapy in the field of oncology.

Enabling platform technology for genetic modification of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) to be used as drug shuttle to target tumors or other areas of interest.

Clinical development:

phase I with modified MSC in gastro-intestinal tumors completed (12/2014)

phase I/II with MSC for vascular disease completed

strong clinical pipeline based on genetic modification of MSC

Implementation of allogeneic cell bank system to accomodate off-the-shelf production of cell-based pharmaceuticals.

Strong network and IP,

interesting preclinical pipeline addressing oncology, lung disease, inflammation.

Secure financing by German Family Offic. Looking for partner/ cofinancing for ongoing clinical development (phase II/III)

Website:
www.apceth.com
Year Founded
2007
Biotech Phase of Development
Medtech Phase of Development
Technology Overview
platform technology for genetic modification of mesenchymal cells
Alliance & Collaborations
strong network with industry and academic partners , national and international
Current Financing Needs
financing planned for 2016 for clinical development phase II
Current Timeline
phase II results oncology in 2016
Current Investors
family offices: Santo-holding and FCP, Munich, Germany
IP Status
more than 30 patents granted for cell and gene therapy/ gene delivery
Recent Milestones
phase I with genetically modified MSC in Oncology completed, First in man
apceth GmbH & Ko. KG
CEO 

Rana Gupta United States

BIOARRAY is a biotech company located at the Science park in New Haven. BIOARRAY is customizing treatments for patients to cure breast cancer the first time. BIOARRAY’s lead breast cancer test has been shown to reduce ineffective treatments by over 50% in proof of concept studies. BIOARRAY is a recipient of Avon Foundation and Connecticut Innovations funds. BIOARRAY is a MassChallenge Accelerator Winner.

Biotech Subsector
Biotech Phase of Development
Technology Overview

In contrast to most studies that focus on the unhealthy cancer patient populations, BIOARRAY studies cancer in reverse by using genes in healthy cell organization to identify cancer markers. These biomarkers work like surveillance cameras watching how a particular breast cancer will behave when treated with chemotherapy. By measuring the mRNA expression levels of these biomarkers, Bioarray diagnostic tests significantly increase the accuracy of predicted chemo-response rates.

Alliance & Collaborations
Avon Foundation, Connecticut Innovations
Supporting Metrics or Evidence

BIOARRAY's lead test distinguishes itself by addressing a vital question at the beginning of basic chemotherapeutic treatment for 75% of diagnosed breast cancer patients who currently have a 24% response rate. BIOARRAY's test clinical proof of concept studies showed:

55% reduction in ineffective chemo

68% improvement in response rate

42% of patients classified as non-responders up front

Current Financing Needs

The company is raising its Series A round of financing to achieve key milestones to take the lead test to early adoption.

Current Timeline

BIOARRAY has developed a business plan whereas the Bioarray diagnostic uses commercially-available gene-expression platforms such as PCR for its lab analysis. BIOARRAY will engage licensees and distributors to access the global market. BIOARRAY will hold closely the proprietary algorithms at the heart of the diagnostic in a cloud-based information platform. BIOARRAY's lead test is in a position to go to market within 2 years.

Current Investors

Grant: Avon Foundation – first of its kind from Avon

Equity: Connecticut Innovations and Angels

IP Status

BIOARRAY intellectual property includes methods, algorithms and biomarkers. BIOARRAY strategy to protect its intellectual property is a combination of trade secrets and patents. The company is growing a patent portfolio of US and international patents that is exclusively owned by BIOARRAY and is not subject to licensing or royalty obligations.

Recent Milestones

  1. Performed clinical proof of concept with I-SPY 1 clinical trial
  2. Data gathered (and ready to complete analysis) for I-SPY 2 trial
  3. Built cloud-based interactive information platform and interactive portal
  4. Built laboratory infrastructure
  5. Developed IP strategy comprising know-how and patents (internationally filed)
Management Team Highlights

CEO Marcia Fournier has over a decade of experience in oncology at leading Institutions in the US. Non-executive chairman Michal Preminger and Board Directors Una Ryan and Henry Kay have extensive experience in management, financing, acquisitions, and diagnostics. The Company also has a team of active business advisors with experience in business development, acquisitions and venture capital.

Rana Gupta
Bioarray Therapeutics Inc.
LinkedIn logo Business Advisor 
BIO

Rana K, Gupta is trained as a businessman (not a techie), Rana has worked in several industries (pharma, consulting, VC), but he comes to BIOARRAY as a result of having invested in, run, and ultimately sold diagnostic company HistoRx to Novartis.

 

Dr Femida Gwadry-Sridhar Canada

Pulse Infoframe Inc strives to improve workflow using computer-assisted capture of patient data for specialists – our cloud based software enables better local and global sharing of the data for those who need it to make decisions – our end-user driven tools analyze the data to advance knowledge and thus patient care. Data can be directly entered into our system, and because we sit on top of any EMR system we access additional data that is not otherwise easily accessible. Once accessed, the data is de-identified, aggregated and mined producing meaningful information for our end-users. 

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We have applied our solution in various clinical verticals including speciality clinics (Melanoma, Oncology, Neonatology, etc), Imaging and PACS systems (with INFINITT PACS, ClearCanvas, etc) and clinical trials (tracking prostate cancer, Pharmacovigilance, economics, etc). Modules are versatile and can be templated to be used in a variety of systems for achieving the best workflow possible.

Year Founded
2011
Main Sector
Medtech Phase of Development
Technology Overview
Our flagship product is a cloud-based clinical and informatics solution that acts either as a stand-alone system aggregator or is interoperable with existing EMRs. Our solution is a database-driven informatics tools can be used for creating, maintaining, organizing and modeling clinical and outcomes data. Our sophisticated analytics engine can access data so that end-users can dynamically conduct online analysis and reporting. All clinical, imaging and administrative data is aggregated from heterogeneous data sources and is organized for effortless analytics. Data is securely stored within our platform with full reporting or auditing abilities.
Dr Femida Gwadry-Sridhar
Pulse Infoframe Inc.
LinkedIn logo Co-Founder & CEO 
BIO

Dr. Femida Gwadry-Sridhar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pulse Infoframe Inc. She is a pharmacist, epidemiologist and methodologist with over 25 years of experience in clinical trials, disease registries, knowledge translation, health analytics and clinical disease outcomes.

Jason Hafler

Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures (SGBV) is the corporate venture arm of Sanofi based in Cambridge Massachusetts USA. Originally established in 21 as Genzyme Ventures SGBV is mandated to invest directly in private early-stage life science companies with promising new products that may be future Sanofi pipeline candidates. The firm seeks to invest across the more expansive business footprint of Sanofi. The firm has a global mandate and is currently seeking new equity investment opportunities.
Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures
Director of Investments 

Todd Haim

NCI SBIR
Program Director 

Sam Hall United States

Apple Tree Partners is a private equity fund that was established in 1999 and based in New York, NY, with satellite offices in Princeton, NJ, Cambridge, MA and Brussels, Belgium. The firm controls up to $1.75 billion in assets under management and makes equity investments ranging from $100,000 for academic spinouts to $150 million dollar in later stage deals. The firm seeks to make investments around the globe with a focus on creating and building companies located within the US and Europe.

Year Founded
1999
Investor Type
Biotech Phase of Development
Medtech Phase of Development
Capital Structure Preference
Investment Stage Preference
Apple Tree Partners
Principal 

J. Zach Hall United States

Immusoft’s mission is to develop a breakthrough platform for delivering targeted medicines — programming a patient’s own cells to become miniature drug factories.

Our technology instructs a patient's cells to constantly secrete gene-encoded medicines (biologics). It will enable new treatments by solving current delivery limitations and production challenges. We are initially targeting orphaned diseases. 

Immusoft’s platform can program cells to continually produce and secrete therapeutic proteins and rare antibodies that have been impossible to elicit with a vaccine. This approach makes possible treatments that are otherwise impractical due to short halflife, injection site reactions, production challenges or a small market size. It offers many of the benefits of traditional approaches and modern gene therapies with less risk and greater control.

Immusoft has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs as well as support from private investors, including the former head of preclinical development at Seattle Genetics. We have an exclusive license option on our core technology from Caltech and have filed two additional patents covering our extensive modifications to the technology.

ISP technology could replace a lifetime of infusions with a patient’s own drug-producing cells.

Website:
www.immusoft.com
Year Founded
2009
Biotech Phase of Development
Technology Overview
Turning patients' cells into drug factories
Alliance & Collaborations
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Discovery Genomics, Inc, University of Minnesota, The Ragon Institute, University of California San Francisco
Supporting Metrics or Evidence
Late-stage preclinical
Current Financing Needs
$3 to >$20M
Current Timeline
Preparing IND for clinical trial
Current Investors
Breakout Labs, Founders Fund Science, several angels
IP Status
multiple patents filed worldwide
Recent Milestones
GMP scale-up in preparation for clinical trial; engaging the FDA for Investigator-initiated IND; use of Sleeping Beauty Transposon non-viral vector
Management Team Highlights
Matthew Scholz (Founder and CEO) – Seasoned startup executive; founded and exited Point B Telematics. Eric Herbig, Ph.D., M.B.A. (CSO) – 15+ years of research experience and significant commercialization and management expertise. Zach Hall (Dir. of Operations) – Co-founder and operations director at two previous biomedical startups. Mei Xu, Ph.D. (Dir. of Research) – Molecular biologist with extensive research experience.
Immusoft Corporation
Director of Operations