Advent Life Sciences United Kingdom

Advent Life Sciences

We invest predominantly in early and mid-stage life sciences companies.  We seek to back truly innovative companies that have a first-in-class or best-in-class approach and who are looking for a well-connected partner on the road to success.

Our investments cover a range of sectors within life sciences, including new drug discovery, enabling technologies, med tech and diagnostics.Advent Life Sciences is one of Europe’s leading venture teams investing in life sciences businesses. We are a deliberately small, and highly focused team of senior individuals, with long-standing track records of entrepreneurial and investment success across the UK, Europe and the USA.

Real people. Real insight. Real value.

Innovation. Clarity. Execution.

 

 


Dr Dale Pfost
Dr Dale Pfost
LinkedIn logo General Partner 

Antibody Solutions United States

Antibody Solutions is a premier developer of therapeutic, diagnostic and critical reagent antibodies. Our platforms include human antibodies from transgenic OmniRats™, Hybridoma Libraries™, and high-throughput flow-cytometry screening of cell-associated targets. We provide full technical support and project management with all services performed in the USA. 

Website:
www.antibody.com
Year Founded
1995
Service Provider Type
Medtech Subsector
Biotech Phase of Development
Unique Capabilities

Human Ab producing OmniRats™ 

Hybridoma Libraries™  

High-throughput flow-cytometry screening 

Proven record of success

In Vitro Ab Production

Proven track record of success

John Kenney
President 

Apple Tree Partners 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
Sam Hall
Principal 
Aaron Kantoff
Vice President 

Baird Venture Partners

Baird Venture Partners is the venture and expansion capital arm of Robert W. Baird & Co. The Baird Venture Partners team is based in Chicago Illinois and has around $27 million in total assets under management. In 214 Baird closed a fourth venture capital fund at $185 million. The firm is currently seeking opportunities in the life science sector and while Baird has no strict timeline to make investments the group would invest in a new firm within the next 6-9 months if a compelling opportunity was identified. The firm?s equity investments range from $3-1 million but are typically in the $8-1 million range.The firm will only consider investment into US based firms.
Momei Qu
Senior Associate 

Baxter Ventures

Baxter Ventures is the strategic venture arm of Baxter International Inc. that was formed in 2011 and is based in Deerfield, Illinois. The firm is currently making equity investments out of a $200 Million fund with allocations generally falling in the $3-$5 million range. The firm is looking in invest in companies who have previously or are currently in the process of securing investment from other institutional investors. The firm is willing to look globally for investment opportunities and plans to make approximately 2 new investments over the next 6-9 months.

Priyanka Rohatgi
Director 

BioScience Managers Australia

BioScience Managers is a venture capital life science investment firm headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. The group makes equity investments from $3M-5M and anticipates about 6 new investments this year. BioScience Managers invests globally. 

BioScience Managers will invest in companies across the life science space, including therapeutics, diagnostics and medical technology. The group does not invest in service providers. BioScience Managers considers all subsectors and indications, including orphan indications. The group will consider technology either in or prepared for human clinical trials and is open to all classes of devices. BioScience Managers seeks investments in novel technology and is not looking to gain share of an existing market. 

Investor Type
Biotech Phase of Development
Medtech Phase of Development
Capital Structure Preference
Investment Stage Preference
Jeremy Curnock Cook
Managing Director 
Amanda Gillon
Investment Analyst 
Matt McNamara
CIO 

Biosortia Pharmaceuticals United States

Biosortia has opened the door to a new frontier of fascinating compounds that have the potential to materially impact the direction of various chronic diseases.  We are dedicated to discovering new chemical entities for the management of critical chronic disease states such as cancer, neuroscience, infectious disease, and inflammatory disorders to ultimately improve the lives of others.

Value Proposition

Pharma is looking for 3 key things:

1. Novel, never seen before, chemistry from new environments to fight chronic disease

2. Higher levels of potency (nano to Pico molar) to reduce the impact of side-effects

3. New mechanisms of action to fight chronic disease in new and more effective manner

It is well known that micro-organism consortia (not macro) are one of the most biologically active and chemically diverse plant/fungi that are rich in what we call “Defense Mechanism Chemistry”.  Defense Mechanism Chemistry is key in developing drugs for cancer, infectious disease and inflammation.  The problem is no one has been able to get access to this unique chemistry at scale and have the natural products expertise to identify the unique compounds…until now.  

We will provide Pharma with new compounds, rich in “Defense Mechanism Chemistry” on a routine basis that could shorten the discovery cycle by 2-3 years and reduce the overall cost.  

Best Regards,

Kurt Dieck

President and CEO

kdieck@biosortia.com

(614) 296-7076

Year Founded
2008
Biotech Subsector
Biotech Phase of Development
Technology Overview
Mobile, scalable, technology that maintains the integrity of the cell. Biosortia has proprietary methods & technologies that allow us to harvest unique single cellular micro-organism consortia never before studied and in unprecedented quantities targeting 500-1,000kg dry weight solids (DWS). Our technologies and capabilities open up this rich environment of bioactive and chemically diverse compounds for research in the pharmaceutical space for the first time ever. Biosortia’s relationship with NOAA and our Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with them provides Biosortia with identification and access to distinctly qualified harvest locations.
Alliance & Collaborations
(Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Eisai and Cubist Pharmaceuticals) with more in the pipeline.
Supporting Metrics or Evidence
Promising Early Results with big pharma (Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Eisai and Cubist Pharmaceuticals) with more in the pipeline. • Eli Lilly’s OIDD To date, nearly 100% of Compounds of Interest submitted into Eli Lilly’s Open Innovation Drug Discovery (OIDD) program have been accepted for evaluation…compared to an average 50-60% rejection rate on all submissions. This unprecedented achievement has recently earned Biosortia the inaugural “Collaborator of the Year” award from Lilly. In addition, due to the success in the OIDD Program, Lilly asked to join our Pharma Direct Model and test our fraction library. Initial results across simple 2 assays have produced 10 leads that they desire to follow-up in December 2014. • Big Pharma Interest As of September 30, 2014 we have 4 Big Pharma companies in our Pharma Direct Model (Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Cubist and Eisai) with 3 others in the pipeline in various stages of discussions.
Current Financing Needs
Capital- Biosortia has raised 2 rounds of series A Preferred Shares; November 2012 of $1.1M ($29M pre-money valuation) and September 2013 of $3.9M ($35M pre money valuation). In addition, it secured $1 million loan (2% interest) from the State of Ohio, therefore meeting our original desired capital raise of $4-5 million. The current raise is for $3-$6 million dollar to provide the runway to our first licensing agreement in Q4 2015 and drive the scaling of science capability to support the volume from our fraction libraries to be launched in Q1 of 2015.
Current Timeline
Hit rates well in excess of expectations Through our Pharma Direct Partners and 8 academic collaborators, we have over 50% of our fractions active against various therapy areas. This demonstrates both the richness of our compounds and the diversity across multiple therapy areas. With one of our Big Pharma partners alone, we have 48 active fractions/wells, with 20 showing inhibition of cancer growth from 90-99.8%. • Clear pathway to first license event in 2015 We can share with you a clear pathway to a license event in 2015. AZ, Lilly and Eisai are all on schedule to complete their R&D efforts by Q3 of 2015 that will put them in position to determine which compounds of interest they would like to license.
Recent Milestones
To date, nearly 100% of Compounds of Interest submitted into Eli Lilly’s Open Innovation Drug Discovery (OIDD) program have been accepted for evaluation…compared to an average 50-60% rejection rate on all submissions. This unprecedented achievement has recently earned Biosortia the inaugural “Collaborator of the Year” award from Lilly.
Management Team Highlights
Experienced Leadership Team & Advisors Biosortia’s leadership team has over 135 years of healthcare and life science experience with expertise in both pharmaceutical research and the micro-organism aquatic environments with the capability to provide new chemistry in a research ready format and co-develop with Pharma to pre-clinical. -Kurt D. Dieck, President and CEO - Mr. Dieck has spent 30 years in healthcare, including 18 years at Arthur Andersen where he was a global equity partner. In 2002, Kurt joined Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 public company as a senior executive; where over his tenure he had responsibilities for Strategy, Business Development and ultimately SVP of Business Execution for the $100B pharmaceutical distribution segment. There he worked with a broad spectrum of partners, including brand pharmaceutical manufacturers, throughout the supply chain. Kurt also sits on two other healthcare related boards that are owned by Private Equity firms. -Guy T. Carter, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer – Dr. Carter has over 30 years of experience working in Pharmaceutical R&D, primarily in the discovery and development of microbial products. In the course of his career in the pharmaceutical industry he worked as a natural products discovery scientist and advanced through levels of scientific management to the overall leadership of the Natural Products Discovery function at Wyeth Research (later acquired by Pfizer), as well as directing other elements of the Chemical Technologies Department. Guy received a doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and then pursued marine natural products research on an NIH-sponsored post-doctoral fellowship with Kenneth Rinehart at the University of Illinois. -Haiyin He, Ph.D., VP of Research – Dr. He has more than 20 years of experience in pharmaceutical R&D, specializing in discovery of drug leads from natural products and their semi-synthetic analogs in oncology, infectious disease, and other therapeutic areas. Haiyin worked as a principle scientist III and group leader at Wyeth Research and after the merger between Pfizer and Wyeth, he continued on to work at Pfizer World Wide Medicinal Chemistry as an associate research fellow in the area of antibody-drug conjugates for cancer chemotherapy. Haiyin received a doctorate in marine natural products at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with John Faulkner, and then acquired a postdoctoral experience at Chemistry Department, Cornell University with Jon Clardy.
Dr Guy Carter
Dr Guy Carter
LinkedIn logo CSO 
Mr Kurt Dieck
Mr Kurt Dieck
LinkedIn logo President and CEO 

Biotherapeutics inc United States

BioTherapeutics Inc. (BTI) is a pre-clinical stage company developing novel small-molecule drugs to treat inflammation associated with autoimmune related disorders and type 2 diabetes (T2D). We have identified an orally-active, first-in-class top lead compound that targets a unique and novel MoA: the LANCL2 pathway. Our top lead compound has demonstrated extremely positive efficacy in mouse models of both IBD and T2D and our preliminary toxicology data has confirmed that is safe at a very high dose and as a multiple dose for 14 days.

We just closed a very well funded seed round (NIH, CIT Gap Funds, other investments) and we are now looking to raise from $3 to $5M to generate IND enabling data and start human trials.

Dr Adria Carbo
LinkedIn logo Scientific Director 

Brace Pharmaceuticals United States

Brace Pharmaceuticals is based in Rockville, MD, and is a strategic investment company formed by Brazil-based pharma company EMS S/A. Brace investment structure varies depending on a company’s development stage; for early-stage opportunities Brace typically makes equity investments and may syndicate with other investors, whereas for clinical-stage opportunities Brace is more likely to form strategic partnerships that involve rights to an asset. Brace is open to considering therapeutic opportunities globally, but only if the company is pursuing the US market.

Brace Pharmaceuticals invests in therapeutics; about 80% of the firm’s investments are in clinical-stage assets, with a preference for companies with some human proof-of-concept data; the remaining 20% of investments are made in preclinical opportunities. Drug-device combinations will also be considered, but Brace does not invest in diagnostics. The firm will invest in both small and large molecules, and has a strong preference for investing in orphan drugs and other niche disease areas. It is preferred that indications have validated clinical endpoints and can be studied using small trials. Indications that require large clinical trials, including as cardiovascular diseases and primary care indications (such as influenza) will not be considered.

Basheer Zada
Business Development 
Vinzenz Ploerer
President & CEO 
Todd Brady
Director of Finance 

Correlation Ventures United States

Correlation Ventures is a venture capital firm that founded in 2010 and is based in San Diego, California with an additional office in Palo Alto, California. The firm currently has approximately $165 million in total assets under management. The firm typically makes investments ranging from $0.25 million to $5 million over the life of the company, and the first investment will be not larger than $2.5 million. The firm’s preferred capital structure is convertible preferred equity or convertible loan. Correlation Ventures will consider invest in any industry segment at any stage, but there must be at least one other venture capital firm making their first investment in the company in this round. The firm only invests in US-based companies. 

Correlation is extremely opportunistic when it comes to investments in the life sciences space; with that being said the firm's specified sectors and sub sectors of interest may or may not be an area in which Correlation Ventures is currently looking to allocate capital to. The firm has made a number of investments in companies in the life sciences space, and has mainly invested in companies in the biotech therapeutics and diagnostics space. The firm's current portfolio includes biotech therapeutics and diagnostics firms developing products targeting endocrine, metabolic, and nutritional diseases, musculoskeletal system and connective tissue, neoplasms, cancer, and oncology, genitourinary system, and infectious and parasitic diseases.

Year Founded
2010
Investor Type
Medtech Phase of Development
Capital Structure Preference
Investment Stage Preference
David Coats
Managing Director