Cure Ventures launches with $350m early-stage biotech fund
Cure Ventures managing partner and co-founder Richard Lim
There’s a new biotech venture capital fund on the scene, following the launch today of Cure Ventures with $350 million in capital commitments and a pledge to help start-ups ‘de-risk’ their businesses.
The new fund has been co-founded and is being led by life sciences industry veterans Richard Lim, David Fallace, and Lou Tartaglia, who collectively have more than 80 years’ experience of investing in the sector.
The fund is dedicated to building early-stage life sciences and biotech companies, primarily focused on new therapeutics, according to the managing partners, who include such companies as Nuvation Bio, Gossamer Bio, Replimune, Morphic Therapeutic, Paratek Pharma, Codiak Biosciences, and Denali Therapeutics among their previous investment projects.
Cure Ventures says its inaugural fund is supported by a syndicate of US and international investors that includes state and city public pension funds, foundations and endowments, fund-of-funds, hospital and health systems, sovereign wealth funds, and family offices.
It will focus its attention on early-stage companies, providing seed funding of between $250,000 and $6 million and, importantly, expertise on day-to-day decision-making to help them reduce the risk in their programmes before they move from the preclinical to the more costly clinical development stage.
The two-year-old firm also intends to co-lead first and second follow-on rounds for the most promising companies in its portfolio, seeing them through to their exits, and will favour genetic validation as part of the process to guide a drug through development, increasing the probability of success and mitigating the cost of failure.
“Biopharma venture capital is an enterprise in risk management that demands rigor, diligence, and patience,” commented Richard Lim, whose career in the sector spans more than 30 years, including leadership positions in biotech companies, as well as VC firms.
“At Cure, we aren’t just signing a cheque,” he added. “We are committed to working closely with founders to collaborate and operationalise capital, making us a true sweat equity partner.”
Fallace’s 20-year-plus career includes spells at Polaris Partners and the Investment Fund for Foundations, while Tartaglia’s three decades in the sector featured positions at 5AM Ventures and Third Rock Ventures, as well as senior executive roles at Solstice Biologics, Gene Logic, and Millennium Pharma.
The new fund comes after a difficult funding environment for biotech in the US last year, following a record 2021, but also amid signs of an uptick this year.
Cure Ventures launches its first fund shortly after the US- and UK-based VC SR One closed a $600 million second biotech fund, and the debut of Curie.bio with $520 million in capital commitments.
