March 26, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Early-stage biotech startup backer Flagship Ventures has raked together $537 million for its newest fund, the fifth one the operation has created since it was founded in 2000. It’s a venture likely to be closely watched because eight of Flagship’s last investments are now listed on the NASDAQ and have a combined worth of over $10 billion.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Flagship said the $537 million infusion its total funds under management to $1.4 billion.
The news surprised exactly no one Thursday. “File this one under the header of ‘predictable no-brainer biotech headline of the week,’” wrote biotech blogger Luke Timmerman over at Forbes, who added that investors like Flagship are particularly crucial to the funding life cycle because of the amount of risk they are willing to take on.
“It plans to use the new cash to do the same stuff it has always done—build new biotech companies from scratch, invest in existing companies at the early stage, and bet on some of the more risky and potentially disruptive technologies it can find,” said Timmerman.
In fact, it was one of these riskier early technologies, messenger RNA therapy, that lead to one of Flagship’s largest successes to date, Moderna Therapeutics, which has so far received a staggering $1 billion from marquee-name partners including Merck & Co. , AstraZeneca PLC and Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. .
Managing partner Noubar Afeyan told Forbes it aims for that level of success with all its ventures, with three of its four previous funds performing in the upper quartile when compared all venture funds launched at the same time. But the company is able to replicate that achievement by sticking closely to its strict mandate of only investing in what it knows well.
“All we do is life sciences, and all we do is early stage,” Afeyan said. “We are doing what we said, when we started the firm back in 2000. Maybe we’re too simplistic and naïve. But this is what we know how to do, so we’ll do it…We operate at modest levels, because a lot of what we do is put our effort in, not just our money.”
BioSpace Temperature Poll
U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline filed a WARN letter in late February with the state of Pennsylvania indicating another 150 people would be laid off in its commercial and research and development group near Philadelphia. BioSpace wants to know if you think Pharm Country will do what it takes to keep biotech jobs in the area?
