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Sofinnova Ventures was founded in 1974 and is based in Menlo Park, CA. The firm has approximately $1b of assets under management, and makes life science investments from two fund families; the main Sofinnova Ventures fund and Sofinnova HealthQuest Capital. Sofinnova Venture Partners IX closed at $500 million in 2014, and the debut HealthQuest fund closed at $110 million in 2014. The firm makes investments in the form of equity (preferred stock) and is an activist investor; the firm prefers to lead investments, take a board seat at its portfolio companies and be actively involved in company management. Sofinnova Ventures plans to make 4-6 new investments in life science companies in 2014. 

The Sofinnova Ventures main fund invests in biopharmaceuticals and typically makes initial investments of $5-15m, with the potential for a total investment of $15-30m. The fund invests in companies based in North America or Europe. 

HealthQuest Capital invests in non-biopharmaceutical life science and medtech companies and typically makes initial investments of $2-3m, with the potential for total investments of $5-6m. HealthQuest Capital is a venture growth fund focused on commercial-stage technologies, and only invests in companies headquartered in North America (particularly the US Southeast or West Coast).

Horizon Technology Finance is a venture lending, investment and financial services management company that was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Farmington, Ct with additional offices in Walnut Creek, CA and Reston, VA. The firm controls approximately $200 million in assets under management and look to provide senior or subordinate loans to companies in the range of $2 to $20 million dollars, and often syndicates much larger deals. The firm prefers to lead or co-lead investments that they are involved in and looks to be involved in 15 deals in the next 6-9 months. The firm provides capital to companies located throughout the United States and Canada.

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.

IR2Dx Company Overview:

IR2Dx has developed a proprietary, breakthrough analysis and reporting system for multi-marker diagnostic test panels, to provide highly personalized treatment strategies for patients with Type 2 diabetes.  While control of glucose levels remains an important factor in the treatment of the disease, the IR2Dx platform evaluates the individual disease pathways for each patient, providing critical information regarding multiple markers and their overall pattern, all of which contribute to management of underlying disease.  This information can then be used by physicians to guide treatment decisions to deliver precision medicine in diabetes. 

Today, there are approximately 382 million people with diabetes in the world, and this number is expected to grow to 592 million by 2035.  The worldwide available market for early detection and drug response diabetes diagnostics is greater than $20 billion.  IR2Dx can enter the market within the current reimbursement and regulatory environments, and is ready to launch its first products in H1 2015 through commercial laboratories.

The IR2Dx platform provides personalized treatment information and recommendations to physicians based on a proprietary decision tree algorithm, greatly enhancing the clinical utility of a laboratory report.  Existing reimbursement levels for the panel markers in the U.S. and key international markets adequately cover the addition of the IR2Dx analysis and reporting. 

The platform is a software-based decision analysis tool. The analysis is performed on results from commercially available diagnostic tests run using standard laboratory bench top systems, requiring no tailored equipment, no custom design of the test system itself, and no capital investment.  Lab technicians upload the multi-marker panel testing results to the IR2Dx proprietary web portal to access the company’s decision support tool analysis product. In the initial commercialization phase, each laboratory will have a specific customized software product, and will pay for each report on a per-use basis. 

In the current U.S. regulatory environment for such products, with “health management IT functionalities”, such as the IR2Dx analysis and reporting system, near-term requirements for premarket review are unlikely, though the FDA may give additional guidance at any time. The IR2Dx platform is protected by a strong and broad intellectual property portfolio combining substantial data and know-how with issued patents in the U.S. and Europe. The company’s issued patents carry claims for use of its analysis platform and combination of markers for treatment guidance “with all glucose lowering drugs.”

 The company anticipates launch of the proprietary IR2Dx platform in H1 2015, introducing its first clinical decision support products through commercial laboratories. 

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was founded in 1886 and is based in New Brunswick NJ with an Innovation Center in Cambridge MA. The firm invests in a variety of fields within the life science sector including medical devices. J&J?s medical device investments are highly varied in both size and structure, the structure may involve milestone payments or may be an equity investment. J&J is interested in early stage medical device companies located globally.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was founded in 1886 and is based in New Brunswick, NJ, with an Innovation Center in Cambridge, MA. The firm invests in a variety of fields within the life science sector, including medical devices. J&J’s medical device investments are highly varied in both size and structure; the structure may involve milestone payments, or may be an equity investment. J&J is interested in early stage medical device companies located globally.