April 3, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
NEW YORK – New York-based Venture capital firm Lux Capital launched a $350 million fund to invest startup healthcare and technology ventures, beating its $245 million target.
The company’s fourth fund, Lux Ventures IV, L.P, will benefit startups with the goals of changing the face of the scientific communities.
“We are looking for new advancements with complex technical and scientific barriers that often require the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams. The most amazing, Earth-shattering ideas come to light when you bring together the smartest minds from seemingly unrelated fields of science and technology,” said Lux’s Peter Hébert.
Among the companies backed by the venture fund are SOLS, which manufactures custom perfect-fit 3D scanned and 3D printed orthotics, used to reduce or eliminate foot pain. In February Lux Capital led SOLS’ $11.1 million Series B funding. Another promising startup Lux is supporting with an investment is 3Scan, which develops ultra-high resolution, 3D brain scans and digital organ reconstruction. The company’s technology can be used to highlight the development of cancerous tissue or damage to neuron tissue. By implementing 3D models of organic tissue, it becomes possible for scientists to progressively track the advance of a degenerative disease, Med City News reported.
Med City News also reported Lux may back technology company Apitable, which is developing paths to automate HIPAA compliance for mobile health businesses.
Additionally, Lux is funding other startups, including Kymeta, a company that makes satellite antennas, Evolv, a security scanning company and startup company Kurion, which combines robotics and chemical engineering to clean up nuclear waste at sites like Fukushima in Japan.
With the 2013 addition of ex-Pfizer Inc. CEO and chairman Jeff Kindler, Lux is no stranger in navigating the healthcare and biotech industries.
With its latest fund, Lux has more than $700 million in total capital under management.
Investing in biotech firms makes good financial sense. In 2013 and 2014 biotech stocks performed well, yielding a good return on investment. More recently, there has been a spate of large pharmaceutical companies snapping up smaller startups and entities, including Pfizer’s $17 billion merger agreements with Illinois-based Hospira, Inc., or Amgen ’s acquisition of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for $10 billion in 2013. There has been an estimated $100 billion spent on pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions since 2014. Last month Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd., which markets Xifaxan, a drug used to treat traveler’s diarrhea, was bought for $11 billion by Canadian-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. .
Late last year, BioSpace presented its NextGen Bio “Class of 2015.” This list contains 30 life science companies that were launched no earlier than 2011 and are headquartered in the United States. The top spot went to Seattle based Juno therapeutics.
Hans Bishop, chief executive officer of Juno Therapeutics said being named the most promising startup “speaks to the milestones we have achieved in less than a year, including two funding rounds and significant progress in clinical development.”
Other top five companies were San Francisco-based Myokardia, Philadelphia-based Sparks Therapeutics, Burlingame, Calif.-based Apexigin and San Francisco-based Audentes Therapeutics.
BioSpace Temperature Poll
After last week’s news that Gilead had issued a health advisory to doctors, concern is growing after nine patients taking Harvoni or Sovaldi along with another drug, amiodarone, were treated for abnormally slow heartbeats. One of the patients died of cardiac arrest. Three of the nine patients required a pacemaker. That has BioSpace asking, what next?
