Pfizer Venture Investments United States

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 President 

Pharmatek United States

Pharmatek is a contract development & manufacturing company providing dosage form development & cGMP manufacturing of oral, injectable & topical products. Founded in 1999, our services focus on the rapid advancement of small molecule & peptide drug candidates from the bench to the clinic & include:

·         Formulation & Analytical Development

·         cGMP Manufacturing

·         Clinical Packaging, Labeling & Worldwide Distribution

 

Our experience includes first-in-man strategies, solutions for poorly soluble compounds, controlled release formulations & separate facilities for the handling of cytotoxic & potent compounds.  Pharmatek’s drug delivery technologies include:

·         Solid Dispersions

·         Particle Size Reduction

·         Lipid Delivery

·         Complexation

·         Lyophilization

·         Suspensions & Emulsions

Pharmatek’s 68,000 sq. ft. facility includes 9 class 100,000 cGMP manufacturing suites, formulation & analytical laboratories, & ICH stability storage.  Pharmatek has over 150 clients globally, ranging from virtual to large pharmaceutical companies. Having manufactured product for clinical trials in the North America, Europe & Asia; Pharmatek has successfully completed several large pharma quality, EH&S & QP audits.

Mr Tim Scott
Mr Tim Scott
LinkedIn logo President 

Plug and Play Tech Center United States

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.

Phillip Vincent
Corporate Partnerships Manager 

Plug and Play Ventures United States

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.


Neda Amidi
Investment Associate 

Prolog Ventures United States

Prolog Ventures is a venture capital firm based out of St. Louis Missouri that was founded in 2001. The firm is currently making investments out of its vintage 2013 4th fund of approximately $100 million. The firm is looking to make equity investments in companies ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. The firm will invest in companies across the United States and plans to make approximately 3-4 investments over the next 6-9 months.

Brian Clevinger
Managing Director 

RDD Pharma Israel

RDD Pharma, a clinical stage company with programs in:
1. Fecal incontinence (Phase 2a)
2. Chronic anal fissure (Phase 3 ready).
3. Pruritus Ani - preclinical development
4. Radiation Colitis - animal studies

- All rograms utilize a 505(b)2 strategy .
- Anal Fissure IP goes out to 2030.
Year Founded
2009
Biotech Subsector
Biotech Phase of Development
Medtech Phase of Development
Technology Overview

Company focused on ano-rectal diseases

Experienced management team

Lead product targets $600M market with poorly
addressed needs

Follow on product targets a $3B US market

Pipeline - Three clinical stage products:

  • PHASE III READY – ANAL FISSURE
  • PHASE IIa – FECAL INCONTINENCE ONGOING
  • PHASE II READY – PRURITUS ANI

De-risked 505(b)2 regulatory path

Supporting Metrics or Evidence

Fecal Incontinence - P1 Proof of Concecpt + Phase 2a Ongoing

Chronic Anal Fissure - completed two (2) Phase II studies evaluating Nifedipine in CAF.

  • RDD Study 104 - 20 Patients
  • RDD Study 112 - 33 Patients
Current Financing Needs

OrbiMed Israel (invested $4M in 2012) is a lead investor and has committed to $3M of a $15M Series B.

Current Timeline

Anal Fissure  - Phase 3 to commence 1Q2015

Fecal Incontinence - Phase 2a data read March/April 2015

Current Investors

OrbiMed

Ofakim Hi-Tech Ventures

Corporate Finance Holding GmbH

Mor Research

IP Status

Nifedipine Capository™ - Device for Treating the Anal Sphincter

–      Japan                         Granted (new)

–      Australia                   Granted

–      Korea          Allowed (new)

–      Israel           Allowed (new)

–      USA            Granted

–      Canada                     Allowed

Fecal Incontinence

–      US – National Phase

Radiation Colitis

–      Methods for Treating and Ameliorating Radiation-induced Gastrointestinal Tract Injury

Pruritus Ani

–      Method of Treating Anal Pruritus and Other Perianal Disorders

–      USA-issued patent: April 1, 2014

Recent Milestones

Chronic Anal Fissure - completed two (2) Phase II studies evaluating Nifedipine in CAF.

  • RDD Study 104 - 20 Patients
  • RDD Study 112 - 33 Patients
Management Team Highlights

Jason Laufer CEO 

•       Over 25 years in healthcare clinical and commercial operations

•       Global BD & Licensing at URL Pharma (acquired by Takeda for $800M), Managing Director at CELLGRO® (acquired by Corning , and CEO at Elutex

Nir Barak, MD CMO and Founder

•       More than 10 years as internal medicine physician

•       Career integrating R&D and clinical medicine

•       Formerly CSO/Founder of OBEcure Ltd.

 

Robert Niecestro PhD Regulatory Affairs

  • Over 25 years of experience in the healthcare industry
  • Managing Director of Accelapharm, VP Reg. of Axsome Rx and EVP of Clinical & Reg. Affairs at TG Rx
  • VP Clinical & Reg. Affairs at Keryx Biopharma

 

Monil Shah, PharmD MBA Clinical Advisor

  • VP, Clinical Affairs at Ventrus Biosciences
  • Over 15 years in clinical management roles at BMS, Celgene, Amgen, and Novartis

Jason Laufer
CEO 

Recursion Pharmaceuticals United States

The Problem: Pharmaceutical development has traditionally focused on intense study of an explicit molecular target related to a specific disease of interest. This strategy is costly and inefficient.

 

The Solution: We have developed technology that can be scaled to quickly, precisely, reliably, and simultaneously model thousands of genetic diseases in human cells and evaluate the effect of thousands of individual drugs on those disease models. We've built a computational platform that recognizes structural changes in millions of diseased cells and then identifies drugs that return those diseased cells to a healthy state.

 

Proof of Concept: We have already used an early version of this platform to discover a potential treatment for one genetic disease. We have IP for this drug, and have already been approached about licensing.  We are scaling our platform now to enable us to achieve our goal of discovering and partnering to bring to market treatments for at least 100 genetic diseases in 10 years.

Dr Chris Gibson
LinkedIn logo CEO, Recursion Pharmaceuticals 

River Cities Capital Funds United States

River Cities Capital Fund is a private equity firm founded in 1994 and based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The firm manages approximately $500 million under management and is currently investing out of its 2014 vintage $200 fund. The firm looks to make investments of $5-$15 million initially up to $20 million over the investments lifetime. The firm is willing to invest throughout the United States and is looking to make approximately 4-6 equity investments over the next 6 to 9 months.

Rik Vandevenne
Director 

RiverVest Venture Partners United States

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.

Year Founded
2000
Investor Type
Medtech Phase of Development
Capital Structure Preference
Investment Stage Preference
Karen Spilizewski
VP 

Safeguard Scientifics

Safeguard Scientifics is a publicly traded capital deployment firm founded in 1953 and is based in Wayne PA. The firm makes deployments from an evergreen fund and is actively seeking new investments in the healthcare sector. Initial equity placements are typically of $5-1m with the potential for a total allocation of $2-25m over the life of an investment. The firm focuses on North America with a concentration in the Mid-Atlantic and San Francisco Bay Area regions. Deployments are made at a range of stages from early-stage to growth expansion and recapitalization. Safeguard Scientifics prefers to be a sizable minority investor.
Gary Kurtzman
Managing Director