Movetis Takes GI from J&J

VCs—particularly those in Europe—love pre-cooked start-ups and one of the best places to find them is within Big Pharma. So it wasn’t that surprising to see Belgium-based Movetis NV raise a record €49 million ($63.4 million) A round in January with a bunch of gastrointestinal-focused assets from Johnson & Johnson . [See Deal] The round—led by Sofinnova Partners and Life Sciences Partners—overshadows all of 2006’s drug discovery Series As and confirms investors’ continued appetite for lower-risk, closer-to-market ventures. (Another Johnson & Johnson offshoot, delivery firm Macroflux Corp., raised $75 million in October 2006 [See Deal].) A smaller round for Movetis was originally planned, notes Antoine Papiernik, managing partner at Sofinnova, but "demand was so big that we pushed it up." (See "The A List: 2006’s Trend-Shaping Series A Financings," START-UP, January 2007 Also see "The A-List: 2006's Trend-Shaping Series A Financings" - Scrip, 1 January, 2007..)

The reasons: Movetis has a deep pipeline and an even deeper management bench. The start-up begins life with four clinical...