VC style re­turns on 'un­sexy' pub­lic health bets? Gates-backed Ad­ju­vant Cap­i­tal gath­ers $300M to mend a 'fail­ure of imag­i­na­tion'

Glenn Rock­man was sum­moned, about three years in­to a se­nior role on JP Mor­gan’s non-prof­it in­vest­ment bank­ing team, to a spe­cial as­sign­ment re­view­ing a pipeline of drugs, vac­cines and di­ag­nos­tics for ne­glect­ed dis­eases the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion had been fund­ing since the mil­len­ni­um.

By then in 2010, many of these as­sets were mov­ing close to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, and the phil­an­thropists thought they rep­re­sent­ed an at­trac­tive risk pro­file com­bined with in­ter­est­ing com­mer­cial po­ten­tial. But they couldn’t find any pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors to take them over the fin­ish line.

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