New Leaf Venture Partners
Mike Dybbs
PrincipalNYU Office of Therapeutics Alliances
The NYU Office of Industrial Liaison (OIL) promotes the commercial development of NYU technologies into products to benefit the public, while providing resources to the University to support its research, education, and patient care missions. NYU OIL also facilitates research collaborations between NYU researchers and industry on projects of mutual interest.
In 2013, NYU launched the Office of Therapeutics Alliances (OTA). OTA is a nimble, "virtual biotech" approach to advance novel therapeutic projects by playing on the strengths of NYU in dissecting disease pathways and those of external, professional capabilities in early stage R&D. OTA identifies NYU projects with potential for addressing unmet needs, delineates the path to therapeutic proof of concept and assembles internal and external resources tailored to each specific project’s needs to maximize the likelihood of successful partnerships with biopharma, new biotech startups or disease foundations.
Nadim Shohdy
Director, Drug Discovery PartnershipsO2h Ventures Limited
O2h has a track record of investing in emerging biotech, small molecule and frontier life science starts-ups
A passion for entrepreneurship and life sciences motivates o2h to participate in syndicated seed stage investments. O2h are ready to support the investments with active or passive support to further the objectives of the company.
Sunil Shah
PartnerPrashant Shah
PartnerOmnes Capital
Comprising 10 investment professionals, Omnes Capital’s venture capital team acquires minority stakes in young companies with high growth potential. Its main areas of interest are financing innovative business ventures in the information technology and life sciences sectors (drug development, diagnostics, medical devices, bioproduction).
For 12 years, Omnes Capital has managed FCPI mutual funds (French regulated mutual funds investing in innovative companies).
Bruno Montanari
DirectorPBM Capital Group
Jayson Rieger
SVP of Business Development & Portfolio ManagementPfizer Venture Investments
Pfizer Venture Investments (PVI) is the corporate venture capital arm of Pfizer and was founded in 2004. PVI has an annual investments budget of $50 million and invests up to $10M per investing round. The firm focuses mainly on U.S. startups but has global reach. PVI attempts to allocate 80% of its funding to U.S. based companies and utilizes the remaining 20% for international ventures. PVI provides equity funding for private companies in need of seed, growth, or venture financing. Remaining opportunistic, PVI focuses entirely on high growth prospects in all sectors and all phases of development. The ideal candidate has a potential for high growth and returns. Additionally, PVI will seek to in-license products and buyout companies if the opportunity arises.
Barbara Dalton
Vice PresidentPrecision NanoSystems
Precision NanoSystems Inc. (“PNI”) has developed proprietary technology (NanoAssemblr) and companion Reagent Kits (SUB9KITS) that enable the simple manufacture of novel nanoparticles that are used to delivery genetic and small molecule medicines (nanomedicines). Nanomedicines are the "FedEx" of the health-care industry and are used for cell-specific delivery of research tools, diagnostic imaging agents and drugs to study, diagnose and treat disease. PNI's products are commercialized and in high demand from many of leading RNA and small molecule therapeutic biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. http://www.precisionnanosystems.com/products/
James Taylor
CEOEuan Ramsay
COOPrize4Life
Prize4Life is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA focused on accelerating therapy development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Prize4Life uses incentive prizes to attract new minds and drive innovation in ALS drug development. The organization is running the $1M Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize4Life challenge for preclinical validation of a novel ALS therapeutic in an ALS mouse model, and submissions to this prize will be accepted until June 6th 2015. In addition to prizes, Prize4Life also runs infrastructure programs to support the ALS research community, such as the ALS FORUM, an online portal of cutting edge research and drug development news in ALS (www.researchals.org).
Sara Shnider
Executive DirectorPromosome LLC
Promosome is a synthetic biology company founded to commercialize the discoveries of the late Nobel Laureate, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman, and colleague Dr. Vincent P. Mauro of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, CA. Leveraging Dr. Edelman’s and Mauro's unparalleled expertise in the area of mRNA translation and the resulting technologies they pioneered, Promosome offers technology licensing opportunities to biotherapeutic and bioindustrial companies seeking to dramatically improve efficiencies in expression, secretion, and potentially biotherapeutic safety and dose tolerance.
In March 2014, GEHC and Promosome executed an agreement to license a subset of Promosome’s initial technology suite in support of their mammalian cell line development ambitions.
Promosome operates a developmental center in the Torrey Pines section of San Diego which focuses on expanding its mRNA translation-based toolset as well as identifying and developing a pipeline of proprietary proteins which can be differentiated by their unique manufacturing attributes (higher yields, greater homogeneity, etc.) and quite possibly by their safety profile in clinical use.
John Manzello
President & CEORiverVest Venture Partners
RiverVest Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that was founded in 2000 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri with additional office in Cleveland, Ohio. The firm currently has managed over $208 million of total assets. RiverVest has raised two investment funds with total committed capital of $165 million since inception. The recent fund closed at $75 million. RiverVest typically makes equity investments into global companies, and has no specific geographic preferences. The firm will consider making investments at all the stages, and focuses on investments in seed, early-stage and select later-stage companies. The typical investment size is around $6 million, though the firm can invest more or less, depending on the opportunity.
RiverVest is extremely opportunistic when it comes to investments in the life sciences space; with that being said RiverVests specified sectors and sub sectors of interest may or may not be an area in which RiverVest is currently looking to allocate capital to. The firm invests in companies in the biotech therapeutics and diagnostics, as well the medical technology space.
Some of the firms investments have included companies developing biotech therapeutics and diagnostics targeting diseases of the blood and blood forming organs, neoplasms, cancer, and oncology, skin and subcutaneous tissue, cardiovascular diseases, diseases of the ear, and infectious diseases. The firm has also invested in companies developing anti-body based therapeutics. The firm has also invested in firms developing medical technologies such as therapeutic radiation devices, active implantable devices, non active implantable devices, hospital hardware, and imaging devices.