Pe­ter Kolchin­sky and Raj Shah raise a $300M fund de­vot­ed to biotech star­tups

Josh Resnick RA Cap­i­tal

Pe­ter Kolchin­sky and Raj Shah have an­oth­er $300 mil­lion-plus to play with on the biotech ven­ture side of their in­vest­ment busi­ness. 

The two an­nounced Mon­day morn­ing that they’ve put to­geth­er their first pure-play ven­ture fund at RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, which has been known to bet on just about every an­gle in health­care in­vest­ing — from rounds to fol­low-on in­vest­ments at pub­lic com­pa­nies. This new fund of theirs ar­rives well in­to a go-go era of new start­up fi­nanc­ing, with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on build­ing new biotechs.

The RA Cap­i­tal Nexus Fund closed at “just over” $300 mil­lion, they said in a state­ment. Add it to the rest of the mon­ey and their pri­vate deal ca­pac­i­ty jumps to $1 bil­lion, with $2.5 bil­lion un­der man­age­ment.

Nexus is ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in sub­stan­tial­ly all in­vest­ments in pri­vate com­pa­nies made by RA Cap­i­tal along­side its main, long­stand­ing fund, RA Cap­i­tal Health­care Fund L.P.

The out­spo­ken and oc­ca­sion­al­ly caus­tic Kolchin­sky is part­nered with an ur­bane and wide­ly-liked Shah. The co-heads of the ven­ture at RA are Josh Resnick and An­drew Levin, work­ing with 9 oth­er pro­fes­sion­als.

An­drew Levin RA Cap­i­tal

“The com­pa­nies RA Cap­i­tal ex­pects to build will range from sin­gle-as­sets to broad plat­forms, span­ning ear­ly dis­cov­ery through late clin­i­cal stage, across all ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas, such as neu­rol­o­gy, rare dis­or­ders, on­col­o­gy, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease,” said Levin in a pre­pared state­ment.

The group has been build­ing an in­cu­ba­tor with 19 projects and two star­tups to their cred­it. There are al­so ven­ture part­ner and ex­ec­u­tive-in-res­i­dence pro­grams to build up the bench.

So­cial im­age: Pe­ter Kolchin­sky and Raj Shah, RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment

Forge Bi­o­log­ics’ cGMP Com­pli­ant and Com­mer­cial­ly Vi­able Be­spoke Affin­i­ty Chro­matog­ra­phy Plat­form

Forge Biologics has developed a bespoke affinity chromatography platform approach that factors in unique vector combinations to streamline development timelines and assist our clients in efficiently entering the clinic. By leveraging our experience with natural and novel serotypes and transgene conformations, we are able to accelerate affinity chromatography development by nearly 3-fold. Many downstream purification models are serotype-dependent, demanding unique and time-consuming development strategies for each AAV gene therapy product1. With the increasing demand to propel AAV gene therapies to market, platform purification methods that support commercial-scale manufacturing of high-quality vectors with excellent safety and efficacy profiles are essential.

Feng Zhang (Susan Walsh/AP Images)

In search of new way to de­liv­er gene ed­i­tors, CRISPR pi­o­neer turns to mol­e­c­u­lar sy­ringes

Bug bacteria are ruthless.

Some soil bacteria have evolved tiny, but deadly injection systems that attach to insect cells, perforate them and release toxins inside — killing a bug in just a few days’ time. Scientists, on the other hand, want to leverage that system to deliver medicines.

In a paper published Wednesday in Nature, MIT CRISPR researcher Feng Zhang and his lab describe how they engineered these syringes made by bacteria to deliver potential therapies like toxins that kill cancer cells and gene editors. With the help of an AI program, they developed syringes that can load proteins of their choice and selectively target human cells.

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Mathai Mammen, FogPharma's next CEO

Math­ai Mam­men hands in J&J's R&D keys to lead Greg Ver­dine’s Fog­Phar­ma 

In the early 1990s, Mathai Mammen was a teaching assistant in Greg Verdine’s Science B46 course at Harvard. In June, the former R&D head at Johnson & Johnson will succeed Verdine as CEO, president and chair of FogPharma, the same month the seven-year-old biotech kickstarts its first clinical trial.

After leading R&D at one of the largest drugmakers in the world, taking the company through more than half a dozen drug approvals in the past few years, not to mention a Covid-19 vaccine race, Mammen departed J&J last month and will take the helm of a Cambridge, MA biotech attempting to go after what Verdine calls the “true emperor of all oncogenes” — beta-catenin.

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Luke Miels, GSK chief commercial officer

GSK picks up Scynex­is' FDA-ap­proved an­ti­fun­gal drug for $90M up­front

GSK is dishing out $90 million cash to add an antifungal drug to its commercial portfolio, in a deal spotlighting the pharma giant’s growing focus on infectious diseases.

The upfront will lock in an exclusive license to Scynexis’ Brexafemme, which was approved in 2021 to treat a yeast infection known as vulvovaginal candidiasis, except in China and certain other countries where Scynexis already out-licensed the drug.

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Jeff Bluestone (R), Sonoma Biotherapeutics CEO

Jef­frey Blue­stone brings his start­up haul to $400M+, join­ing forces with Re­gen­eron on cell ther­a­pies

These days, when Jeffrey Bluestone gets together with his contemporaries in science, the conversation often turns to retirement plans.

But a little more than three years ago, Bluestone reached a momentous turning point in his career, exiting a prestigious post at UCSF, where he had spent decades in the scientific pursuit of new therapies. And it had nothing to do with retirement anytime in the near future.

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John Flavin, Portal Innovations CEO

Por­tal In­no­va­tions takes its Chica­go biotech in­vest­ing, lab space mod­el to Boston with Bob Langer start­up in tow

Life sciences investor and lab operator Portal Innovations is taking the blueprint it set in Chicago and expanding to Massachusetts, where it will deploy $25 million, and help house new startups in the former Boston Globe headquarters.

Portal CEO and founder John Flavin told Endpoints News the company will open its Boston-area operations in the coming weeks, and its first lab occupant will be Syntis Bio, an early-stage biotech out of Moderna co-founder Bob Langer, MIT professor Giovanni Traverso and Sherlock Biosciences co-founder Rahul Dhanda.

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See­los Ther­a­peu­tics 'tem­porar­i­ly' stops study in rare neu­ro dis­or­der for busi­ness rea­sons

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.

Alec­tor cuts 11% of work­force as it dou­bles down on late-stage neu­ro pro­grams part­nered with GSK, Ab­b­Vie

A month after revealing plans to concentrate on its late-stage immuno-neurology pipeline, Alector is trimming its headcount by 11%.

The layoffs will impact around 30 employees across the organization, the company disclosed in an SEC filing, adding that the plan will “better align the company’s resources” with the new strategy. With $712.9 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments as of the end of 2022, Alector believes the reserves will now get it through 2025.

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CSL CEO Paul McKenzie (L) and CMO Bill Mezzanotte

Q&A: New­ly-mint­ed CSL chief ex­ec­u­tive Paul McKen­zie and chief med­ical of­fi­cer Bill Mez­zan­otte

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.