Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors is one of those pro­lif­ic biotech in­vestor groups which has tra­di­tion­al­ly en­joyed ze­ro­ing in on clin­i­cal-stage in­vest­ments and crossover rounds, a group that prefers more es­tab­lished drug de­vel­op­ment play­ers with near-term pay­off po­ten­tial.

But now they’re part­ner­ing with Xon­toge­ny chief and long­time biotech en­tre­pre­neur Chris Garabe­di­an on a $210 mil­lion fund — with mon­ey con­tributed by in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors and fam­i­ly funds — to go in­to the launch space with their first ear­ly-stage VC fund. Dubbed the Per­cep­tive Xon­toge­ny Ven­ture Fund, LP, or just PXV Fund, they plan to fa­vor up­starts that Garabe­di­an is fos­ter­ing in his in­cu­ba­tor. But they’ll al­so plan to reach out­side that in­ner cir­cle for more A rounds to back, with plans to dom­i­nate ini­tial fund­ing with $10 mil­lion to $20 mil­lion per new­born biotech.

And they have a new start­up to un­veil to­day in the com­ing out par­ty. It’s called Quel­lis Bio­sciences, comes out of Virid­i­an and gets $17 mil­lion in PXV mon­ey to ad­vance undis­closed an­ti­bod­ies for undis­closed tar­gets. body tech,The biotech has a li­cense to use Xen­cor’s an­ti­body tech, de­signed to ex­tend their half life to re­duce dos­ing.

You can ex­pect a lot of the ear­ly mon­ey in to stay fair­ly well hid­den. As Garabe­di­an notes in an in­ter­view, they aren’t all go­ing to make it. So they’ll wait to be more forth­com­ing about some of these star­tups as they grow more as­sured of their po­ten­tial.

PXV has al­ready iden­ti­fied about half of the 8 to 10 com­pa­nies they plan to back out of fund 1. “I think this will go pret­ty quick­ly,’ says Garabe­di­an, who ex­pects the full $210 mil­lion to be com­mit­ted by late 2020 or ear­ly 2021. And once they’re done, they plan to ramp up fund 2.

Xon­toge­ny has pre­ferred a “more lean drug de­vel­op­ment ap­proach,” says Garabe­di­an, avoid­ing the big plays and cen­ter­ing on spe­cif­ic as­sets. And that suits Per­cep­tive just fine.

Per­cep­tive has large­ly stayed out of star­tups in the past be­cause “we don’t have peo­ple who have that ex­pe­ri­ence,” says Adam Stone, Per­cep­tive’s chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer. But they do have a long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with Garabe­di­an, best known for his stint at the helm of Sarep­ta, who fills that hands-on role along with his team at Xon­toge­ny.

Stick­ing with an as­set-cen­tric ap­proach gives the new fund op­tions; M&A deals and part­ner­ing have been hot now for sev­er­al years for com­pa­nies get­ting to clin­i­cal proof of con­cept. IPOs have been run­ning steady as well. And if any of those win­dows close for a while, the part­ners ex­pect to be able to push through to when things pick back up again.

The biotech industry has faced repeated calls to diversify its workforce — and in the last year, those calls got a lot louder. Though women account for just under half of all biotech employees around the world, they occupy very few places in C-suites, and even fewer make it to the helm.

Some companies are listening, according to a recent BIO survey which showed that this year’s companies were 2.5 times more likely to have a diversity and inclusion program compared to last year’s sample. But we still have a long way to go. Women represent just 31% of biotech executives, BIO reported. And those numbers are even more stark for women of color.

In the insular world of biotech, a spectacular failure can sometimes stay on any executive’s record for a long time. But for David Meek, the man at the helm of FerGene’s recent implosion, two questionable exits made way for what could be an excellent rebound.

Meek, most recently FerGene’s CEO and a past head at Ipsen, has become CEO at Mirati Therapeutics, taking the reins from founding CEO Charles Baum, who will step over into the role of president and head of R&D, according to a release.

When Genentech swooped in to buy NASH-focused Jecure Therapeutics back in 2018, a handful of the startup’s executives weren’t quite ready to disperse.

It had been just three years since Jecure launched with a preclinical portfolio of NLRP3 inhibitors — and the takeover came sooner than anyone, including CEO Jeff Stafford, had expected. So he got talking with James Veal and Gretchen Bain, two serial entrepreneurs in charge of Jecure’s R&D.

For a first-time fund, Jeito Capital talks a lot about continuity.

Rafaèle Tordjman had spotlighted that concept ever since she started building the firm in 2018, promising to go the extra mile(s) with biotech entrepreneurs while pushing them to reach patients faster.

Coincidentally, the lack of continuity was one of the sore spots listed in a report about the European healthcare sector published that same year by the European Investment Bank — whose fund is one of the LPs, alongside the American pension fund Teacher Retirement System of Texas and Singapore’s Temasek, to help Jeito close its first fund at $630 million (€534 million). As previously reported, Sanofi had chimed in €50 million, marking its first investment in a French life sciences fund.