The pace of in­no­va­tion at the Dana-Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute in re­cent years has seen a wave of star­tups launch with IP or lead­er­ship sourced from the non­prof­it’s ranks. Now, look­ing for its own re­turns on that suc­cess, Dana-Far­ber has launched a new ven­ture fund to in­vest in those fledg­ling busi­ness­es.

On Thurs­day, Dana-Far­ber un­veiled Bin­ney Street Cap­i­tal — its first-ever ven­ture fund. Roche and Ver­i­ly vet­er­an Lu­ba Green­wood has been tapped to lead the fund, which was named af­ter the lo­ca­tion of the in­sti­tute’s Boston site.

“We’re re­al­ly ex­cit­ed that we can re­al­ly cat­alyze the mis­sion, ba­si­cal­ly, that the Dana Far­ber has,” Green­wood said. “This fund is all to sup­port our mis­sion to find cures for can­cer, so we’re very pas­sion­ate about that,” she added lat­er.

In­vest­ments will be made in eight to 10 star­tups with ties to Dana-Far­ber over the next three years, rang­ing from $250,000 to $2 mil­lion. While the main fo­cus will be ther­a­peu­tics, Dana-Far­ber will al­so con­sid­er nov­el di­ag­nos­tics, dig­i­tal health and ser­vices com­pa­nies.

“We must com­mit all the re­sources we can to re­duce the bur­den of can­cer, in the clin­ic and in our lab­o­ra­to­ries,” Dana-Far­ber pres­i­dent and CEO Lau­rie Glim­ch­er said in a state­ment.

To be con­sid­ered, star­tups must have been ei­ther been cre­at­ed with in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty from Dana-Far­ber or co-found­ed by one of the in­sti­tute’s in­ves­ti­ga­tors. Dana-Far­ber says its re­search and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty has helped launch more than 11 star­tups in the last three years alone.

“The sci­ence has to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed, it has to be tru­ly break-through…” Green­wood said. “So ba­si­cal­ly the best of the best in on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy.”

Since 2013, Se­ries A in­vest­ments in on­col­o­gy have out­paced all oth­er in­di­ca­tions in deals and dol­lars, ac­cord­ing to Sil­i­con Val­ley Bank’s 2020 an­nu­al re­port. That is, un­til 2019, when on­col­o­gy was out­raised by plat­form com­pa­nies. The can­cer space still at­tract­ed $835 mil­lion in Se­ries A cash, though — hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars more than the amounts raised in neu­rol­o­gy and or­phan/rare dis­eases, ac­cord­ing to SVB.

Back in Oc­to­ber, MD An­der­son launched the Can­cer Fo­cus Fund in con­junc­tion with The Fo­cus Fund. They start­ed off with more than $50 mil­lion in ini­tial cap­i­tal to ad­vance in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al can­cer ther­a­pies from late pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment through Phase I and Phase Ib/II clin­i­cal tri­als.

“With this new Fund, Dana-Far­ber can in­vest in start-up com­pa­nies and lever­age our rights to par­tic­i­pate in sub­se­quent fi­nanc­ing rounds,” said Les­ley Solomon, Dana-Far­ber’s chief in­no­va­tion of­fi­cer. “Sup­port­ing in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies that pro­vide new treat­ments and cures for can­cer will ben­e­fit patents all over the world. In ad­di­tion, the Fund will pro­vide in­vest­ment re­turns to sup­port on­go­ing dis­cov­ery at the In­sti­tute.”

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.

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.

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.