- Insider analyzed more than 90 IPOs to find the top venture-capital firms that led biotech in 2021.
- Arch Venture Partners topped the list, holding nearly $2 billion in equity in biotechs that IPO’d.
- Take a look at its latest batch of investments, which includes some very-early-stage biotechs.
Arch Venture Partners held nearly $2 billion in equity in the record number of biotechs that went public this year, making it the top investor in the industry.
At the same time as it was dominating initial public offerings, the Chicago firm was making a new batch of investments in privately held companies.
The 28 investments ranged from a $3.8 million seed round to a $500 million Series B round, according to PitchBook. With its lengthy track record of success and foreseeing which technologies will be ones to watch, Arch’s investments often influence the biotech industry as a whole. Arch is using its latest fund to invest in several hot fields — including oncology, immunology, and genetics — while lending the venture-capital firm’s capital and credentials to fields that have been placed in the spotlight during the pandemic, like
telehealth
and manufacturing.
For each startup, Insider included whether Arch partners took board seats in the company. In general, VCs hold more board seats at startups where they’ve made bigger investments.
Arch declined to disclose how much it invested in each company. The total amount of each investment round is according to PitchBook.
The list, organized from smallest to largest total deal size, includes some of the first investments out of the $1.85 billion fund Arch closed in February.
Here are the 28 companies that Arch invested in this year:
LunaPBC
Deal size: $3.8 million seed round.
Luna is a
healthcare-data
company founded in 2017 to allow people to choose how and when their personal information from DNA tests, health records, and other tools is shared. The San Diego company then wants to turn around and use that data to help researchers and drug developers.
Recuro Health
Deal size: $17 million Series A.
The virtual-healthcare provider Teladoc has become one of the biggest players in telehealth. So the news that its founding team launched a new telehealth company, Recuro, in Texas in March grabbed Arch’s interest. Arch led Recuro’s Series A round in August.
Slingshot Biosciences
Deal size: $23 million Series A.
Manufacturing is a bottleneck for many different types of treatments. Cell therapies that inject healthy cells into a person’s body to replace or repair damaged ones are difficult to make in large enough batches for a mass use because many of the current options need to be made specially for each person. So Slingshot in Emeryville, California, is designing synthetic cells on demand to make these types of treatments cheaper and faster.
Arch cofounder Keith Crandell and Senior Associate Corey Ritter sit on Slingshot’s board of directors. The company was founded in 2012.
Vizgen
Deal size: $31 million Series B.
DNA testing has been growing and changing since the human genome was first sequenced in the early 2000s. Vizgen was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2019 to create new tools for researchers to sequence and analyze things like RNA.
OncoResponse
Deal size: $41 million Series C.
The Seattle biotech finds antibodies in the immune systems of people who respond extremely well to cancer treatments. OncoResponse isolates those antibodies and is trying to turn them into a drug product to treat cancer.
Steve Gillis, a managing director at Arch, sits on the company’s board. The company was founded in 2015.
Volastra Therapeutics
Deal size: $44 million Series A.
New York’s Volastra wants to prevent and treat metastatic cancer. The 2-year-old company is focused on biology research into chromosomal instability, which can cause chromosomes to be duplicated or deleted, which leads to cancerous cells.
Ultivue
Deal size: $50 million Series D.
Ultivue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides services to other life-sciences companies, specializing in unique tools to analyze tissue samples.
Crandell sits on the board of Ultivue, which was founded in 2015.
ImmuneID
Deal sizes: a $17 million seed round and $50 million series A.
ImmuneID was cofounded last year by one of the young serial entrepreneurs Insider highlighted in October: Lea Hachigian. She developed Boston’s ImmuneID with a handful of other founders to quickly assess things like viruses and allergens to find protective antibodies.
LifeMine Therapeutics
Deal size: $50 million Series B.
The 5-year-old LifeMine searches through fungi — mushrooms, yeasts, and molds — to find new medicines. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech is focusing on treating cancer and the immune system’s response with its first experimental therapies.
Mozart Therapeutics
Deal size: $55 million Series A.
Arch was involved in Mozart Therapeutics’ seed round last year and led its Series A round in October. The Seattle startup’s work revolves around a type of immune cells called T cells. It hopes to use them to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
Gillis sits on Mozart’s board of directors. The company was founded in 2019.
Rome Therapeutics
Deal size: $77 million Series B.
Rome CEO Rosana Kapeller and her team scour sections of repeating genetic information, often referred to as “junk DNA,” for clues to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Arch Managing Director Kristina Burow and Venture Partner Jay Parrish are on board of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company, which was founded in 2019.
Interline Therapeutics
Deal size: $92 million Series A.
Launched in May, the San Francisco biotech is studying how proteins in the body act as part of communities. That’s different from the typical way that proteins are studied, as they are often examined in isolation on a lab bench. Interline wants to take those learnings and develop drugs to treat common illnesses, which are so far unspecified.
Burow sits on the board of Interline, which was founded last year.
Singleron Biotechnologies
Deal size: $100 million Series B.
Singleron sells a variety of diagnostics and lab equipment for hospitals, research organizations, and drug companies. The company was founded in 2018 and has locations in New Haven, Connecticut, Germany, and China.
Boundless Bio
Deal size: $105 million Series B.
San Diego’s Boundless Bio wants to take on the most aggressive types of cancer using one of the disease’s characteristics: the free-floating DNA that may help these cancers survive.
Burow is a director of the 3-year-old biotech, along with Venture Partner Jonathan Lim.
HiberCell
Deal size: $114 million Series B.
A lot happens in and around cancer tumors that can affect their growth and how the immune system responds to them: There can be tools to block immune cells or to hide the cancer from them. New York’s HiberCell plans to address some of these factors with new treatments.
Gillis sits on the board of HiberCell, which was founded in 2019.
Erasca
Deal size: $120 million Series B.
The drug industry’s playbook for developing cancer drugs generally involves focusing on a specific gene behind a cancer or a mechanism the tumor uses. San Diego’s Erasca has taken this playbook to heart and is developing cancer treatments that target either a mutated gene called ras or a biological communication signal called MAPK. Erasca was founded in 2018 and went public in July. It now holds a $1.6 billion valuation.
eGenesis
Deal size: $125 million Series C.
The serial biotech founder George Church cofounded eGenesis in 2015 to fill the gap between people who need an organ transplant and the organs available. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company has turned to pigs and gene editing, tweaking the pig’s DNA so that the organs won’t be rejected by the human immune system or spread harmful viruses.
Gillis sits on the eGenesis board.
Vividion Therapeutics
Deal size: $135 million Series C.
Vividion, which is in San Diego, created cancer and immune-disease drugs that addressed the genetic and other biological characteristics specific to different patients’ forms of the diseases. The company was founded in 2013 and was acquired by Bayer in August for up to $2 billion.
Encodia
Deal size: $135 million Series C.
The San Diego biotech is studying proteins at scale instead of individually. The company wants to design a tool that can be used by life-sciences companies and researchers to analyze proteins.
David Cruikshank, a partner at Arch, sits on Encodia’s board.
Jaguar Gene Therapy
Deal size: $139 million Series B.
Illinois’ Jaguar launched earlier this year and is led by many of the former executives of AveXis, a gene-therapy startup that was bought by Novartis for $8.7 billion in 2018. The biotech’s first gene-therapy programs are targeting a rare metabolic disorder called type 1 galactosemia, a certain genetically driven type of autism, and type 1
diabetes
.
Bit.bio
Deal size: $141 million Series B.
Using cells as therapies has been one of the most exciting spaces in biotech, but its promise has been limited by an arduous and complex production process. The UK’s Bit.bio wants to bring cell manufacturing to the next level, aiming to reprogram stem cells in a consistent, scalable way. It was founded in 2016.
Treeline Biosciences
Deal size: $212 million Series A.
Treeline in Stamford, Connecticut, was founded earlier this year by two big names in cancer research: Josh Bilenker and Jeff Engelman. Bilenker previously led cancer research and development at Eli Lilly, while Engelman was Novartis’ global head of oncology. Treeline’s Series A financing was led by Arch, GV, and OrbiMed.
Arbor Biotechnologies
Deal size: $215 million Series B.
Arbor is looking to develop better ways to edit genes. In particular, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech has seven editors in development that are smaller or more precise than the Cas9 enzyme used in the original CRISPR editing system.
Crandell sits on the board of Arbor, which was founded in 2016.
Sonoma Biotherapeutics
Deal size: $265 million Series B.
Sonoma is trying to turn immune cells into new medicines. The Seattle and San Francisco biotech, founded in 2019, is focused on modifying a type of immune cell called a regulatory T cell to treat various autoimmune conditions, with an initial focus on rheumatoid arthritis and
type 1 diabetes
.
Generate Biomedicines
Deal size: $370 million Series B.
Generate Biomedicines was founded in 2018 by Flagship Pioneering, the venture-capital firm behind the COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech is developing a machine-learning-based technology to develop new protein-based drugs and hopes to start initial human studies by 2023.
Neumora Therapeutics
Deal size: $400 million Series A.
Arch’s team decided to make a really big investment in the neuroscience field by launching Neumora this year. The Watertown, Massachusetts, company plans to develop treatments for everything from mental-health disorders to diseases that attack nerves and muscles.
Three Arch partners — Robert Nelsen, Paul Berns, and Burow — cofounded the company and sit on the board. Berns is also serving as Neumora’s CEO.
Insitro
Deal size: $400 million Series C.
Insitro is focused on using data tools like machine learning to make the early drug-discovery process — the steps before scientists even begin testing prospective medications on mice — easier. The company was founded in 2018 in San Francisco.
Nelsen sits on Insitro’s board.
EQRx
Deal size: $500 million Series B.
EQRx in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been one of biotech’s highest-profile and most polarizing startups since launching in 2020. The company hopes to launch dozens of medicines with lower prices in the coming years that will compete against Big Pharma. The biotech began trading publicly on December 17 via a special-purpose acquisition company.
Berns is on EQRx’s board.
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