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The Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute supports the development of innovative biomedical products to address unmet medical needs in the heart, lung, blood and sleep fields.  OTAC is home to the NHLBI's small business programs (SBIR and STTR) and the NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations.

The NHLBI's SBIR and STTR programs comprise one of the largest sources of early-stage capital for U.S. small business, acting as engines of innovation for developing and commercializing novel technologies and products that aid in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep diseases and disorders. The NHLBI provides grant and contract funding opportunities and resources to support small businesses performing research and development on technologies related to the mission of NHLBI. With an annual budget of $85M, the NHLBI funds about 200 companies each year through the Institute's small business programs.

The NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations accelerate translation of scientific discovery into commercial products that improve health for patients. This unique public-private partnership is changing the way discoveries with scientific and commercial potential are identified and developed.

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. 

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.

Orphagen’s focus is small molecule discovery at novel drug targets. We create programs leading to first-in-class drugs. Our goal is to partner these with development stage pharmaceutical companies.

We have been first mover in creating three discovery programs for novel targets, including one program that initiated Phase 1 clinical trials with a strategic partner (JT Pharma) in 2013 for autoimmune disease.

We work with novel drug targets from a very productive target class, the nuclear receptors.

Our work has so far been funded by $15 M in federal grants and partnership revenue. Orphagen is in the process of raising equity funding to accelerate current programs.

Orphagen’s lead internal program is for retinitis pigmentosa, the major form of hereditary blindness. Closely following are antagonists to SF-1, a promising target for treatment of Cushing’s syndrome, a life-threatening endocrine disorder, and two cancers with an endocrine connection: prostate cancer and adrenocortical cancer. New target screening may lead to first-in-class programs for glioblastoma, sickle cell anemia, and cancer immunotherapy.

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.

Plug and Play Ventures (a successor fund to Amidzad Partners) is a private/family investment vehicle based in Silicon Valley, CA. The fund is a structured organization for making angel investments in pre-seed or seed rounds. Investments are in the form of equity; in the next 6 months Plug and Play Ventures expects to make about 5-10 seed investments of $50,000-100,000 and an additional 40 pre-seed investments of $25,000, and is hoping to increase their allocations in the healthcare sector. Plug and Play also provides a three-month accelerator program. The firm will consider investing in companies worldwide.

Plug and Play Ventures is interested in investing in medical technology, and invests in subsectors in which the firm can apply expertise; typically this means products that have a significant software component. Healthcare IT, biosensors, wearables and health monitoring devices are of interest. While the firm is open to investing in any indication, Plug and Play is particularly interested in diabetes & blood glucose monitoring, personal fitness, and mental/behavioral disorders. In the healthcare IT sector, Plug and Play Ventures is interested in both consumer applications and enterprise software, but is not interested in diagnostic software such as genomic, proteomic, or molecular diagnostic algorithms; however, optimization and data analysis software for hospitals and diagnostic laboratories is of interest.