Pfiz­er $PFE may have made an abrupt ex­it out of the neu­ro­sciences R&D are­na, but it’s still in­ter­est­ed in back­ing the biotechs will­ing to nav­i­gate the ul­tra-high risk field.

De­nis Patrick

The phar­ma gi­ant to­day more than dou­bled its com­mit­ment to its ven­ture arm, adding $600 mil­lion in fire­pow­er and de­vot­ing $150 mil­lion of that for new rounds back­ing up­starts in the neu­ro­sciences world.

Pfiz­er Ven­tures has al­ready backed a small group of play­ers in the field: Aquin­nah, Au­ti­fony, Cor­texyme, MindIm­mune, MIS­SION, and Neu­ro­net­ics. The com­pa­ny al­so helped in the cre­ation, fund­ing and launch of the De­men­tia Dis­cov­ery Fund in 2015.

Now it will go deep­er, fo­cus­ing on neu­ro-de­gen­er­a­tion, neu­ro-in­flam­ma­tion and neu­ro-meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders. 

Pfiz­er spent bil­lions of dol­lars on at­tempts at de­vel­op­ing Alzheimer’s drugs, but nev­er got close to the fin­ish line. Its re­cent de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate its in­ter­nal fo­cus on neu­ro­sciences trig­gered a move to ax about 300 staffers. 

“By chang­ing the way we in­vest in neu­ro­science, we hope to sup­port an en­er­gized com­mu­ni­ty of biotech en­tre­pre­neurs who are pro­gress­ing the un­der­stand­ing of the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms of neu­ro­log­ic dis­eases and help ad­vance po­ten­tial treat­ments for peo­ple with neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions,” said De­nis Patrick, the man­ag­ing part­ner of Pfiz­er Ven­tures.

Patrick, Las­z­lo Kiss, Mar­gi McLough­lin, Chris O’Don­nell and Niko­la Tr­bovic are join­ing the phar­ma gi­ant’s ven­ture team, which will al­so stay fo­cused on on­col­o­gy, in­flam­ma­tion and im­munol­o­gy, rare dis­ease, in­ter­nal med­i­cine and vac­cines.

Versant is once again stepping off the beaten track in biotech to see if they can blaze a trail of their own in a field that has looked too thorny to many investors for years.

The venture group and their partners at Apple Tree are bringing their latest creation out of stealth mode today. Born in Versant’s Inception Sciences’ Chinook Therapeutics is betting that its preclinical take on kidney disease can get an early lead among the companies starting up in the field.

Using a laptop borrowed from his former employer, South London’s St George’s Hospital, Sir Andrew Dillon set about establishing NICE — launched by the then health secretary Frank Dobson — in 1999.  On Thursday, the UK cost-effectiveness watchdog said its first and only chief executive — Dillon — is stepping down in March 2020.

Back in the day, decisions about which drugs and interventions were funded by the National Health Service (NHS) were made at the local level, but this ‘postcode prescribing’ system was fraught with skewed healthcare deployment making the structure unsustainable. A national system was deemed necessary — and NICE was formed to bridge that gap.

With a breakthrough designation in one hand and a fresh $53 million in venture backing in the other, Somerville, MA-based Finch Therapeutics is taking a shot at a one-trial pathway to a possible FDA OK for their new treatment for preventing recurrent C. difficile infections.

The funding brings their total raise for the microbiome company to $130 million, CEO Mark Smith tells me — enough money to pave a runway past the FDA approval they’ve sketched into the most optimistic version for their near-term future.