Jonathan Behr, a US partner at the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF), sees the increase during the past few years in early-stage investments in neurodegeneration-focused biopharmaceutical companies having the impact that investors like the DDF hoped for – big pharma and others are boosting their commitments to the field and jumping back into neuroscience if they previously opted out.
Finance Watch: Dementia Discovery Fund’s Behr Sees Early Investments Reviving Neuroscience Interest
Apollo Health Closed A $180m Aging-Related Diseases Fund
Private Company Edition: Scrip spoke with DDF US partner Jonathan Behr about the convergence of emerging science, venture capital investment and rising big pharma interest in neurodegeneration. Also, in recent VC financings HotSpot raised $100m, while Curie and Ablaze debuted with $75m each.
More from Financing
• By
Public Company Edition: Stock valuations are falling due to political, economic and regulatory uncertainty, resulting in fewer large public offerings, more alternative financings and cost cuts. Carisma, Tenaya, BioAtla, Arbutus, Nkarta, Alector and Adaptimmune announced layoffs.
• By
CEO Kris Elverum told Scrip about the start-up’s platform for editing RNA to correct genetic variants that cause harm and to reproduce healthy variants as a means of treating disease.
• By
The four-year-old firm said it plans to advance programs toward the clinic from the funding round, which comes just over a year after signing two major pharma partnerships.
• By
Private Company Edition: The latest group of drug developers to announce venture capital financings is remarkable for its geographic diversity, from Character Biosciences’ $93m series B round in the US to Augustine’s $85m series B in Belgium to a $29.2m series C for Aculys in Japan.
More from Business
• By
The German firm’s chairman, Hubertus von Baumbach, is adopting a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the threat of pharma tariffs.
• By
Trump announced a 26% reciprocal tariff on India but a country-agnostic exemption of pharmaceuticals implies that the interests of Indian firms and the US consumer are protected for now. What is Indian pharma’s business exposure and what is domestic industry saying?
• By
Industry lobbied for pharmaceuticals to be exempt from Trump’s sweeping US tariffs and the effort appears to have paid off. J&J, Lilly and Merck & Co. even got shout outs.