River­Vest Ven­ture Part­ners has closed its largest fund yet, with $275 mil­lion to in­ject in­to ear­ly-stage drug and med­ical de­vice de­vel­op­ers.

The fifth fund — closed just over two years af­ter the fourth — brings River­Vest’s to­tal as­sets un­der man­age­ment to more than $1.6 bil­lion, the firm said on Wednes­day.

“Fund V’s larg­er size will en­able River­Vest to par­tic­i­pate more ful­ly in lat­er eq­ui­ty rounds of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies which have the great­est po­ten­tial,” co-founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jay Schmelter said in a state­ment.

Schmelter’s fo­cus is on the med­ical de­vice space, while John McK­earn, Niall O’Don­nell and Nan­cy Hong are fo­cused on the bio­phar­ma port­fo­lio.

River­Vest closed its fourth fund in De­cem­ber 2018 with a to­tal of $184.4 mil­lion raised. In its rough­ly 20-year his­to­ry, the firm has in­vest­ed in a to­tal of 55 com­pa­nies, 18 of which have been sold and eight of which have gone pub­lic — most re­cent­ly Spruce Bio­sciences, which priced a $103.5 mil­lion IPO in Oc­to­ber at $15 per share.

Back in 2018, Schmelter told End­points News the firm’s strat­e­gy is to fo­cus on com­pa­nies that tru­ly fill a gap, “while at­tract­ing a buy­er or be­ing ready for an IPO with­in three to five years of the ini­tial in­vest­ment.”

The com­pa­ny tracks at least 27 com­mer­cial prod­ucts de­vel­oped by com­pa­nies it has in­vest­ed in, in­clud­ing the hy­per­kalemia drug Lokel­ma, which was de­vel­oped by ZS Phar­ma be­fore As­traZeneca snagged it in a $2.7 bil­lion buy­out. The drug, ap­proved in 2018, raked in $21 mil­lion in Q3 2020.

“With River­Vest Ven­ture Fund V, we will con­tin­ue our in­vest­ment strat­e­gy ground­ed in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with en­tre­pre­neurs and aca­d­e­m­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tors to de­vel­op prod­ucts for the most press­ing chal­lenges pa­tients face to­day,” Schmelter said in a state­ment.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.