Regeneron launches $500m venture capital arm

Regeneron has formed a corporate venture capital unit with $100 million a year to invest over the next five years in “biopharmaceutical, healthcare, and health technology” start-ups.

The size of the earmarked investment immediately elevates the company into the top tier of biopharma corporate VC investors, a growing group of drugmakers that invest their own funds in emerging companies for a financial return and to get closer to organisations that may provide pipeline-building opportunities.

Regeneron’s fund will be independently managed by former Regeneron executives Jay Markowitz and Michael Aberman, said the company, which said the primary interest of the new fund is in “biotechnology, devices, tools, and enabling technologies”, but will look at investments more broadly across healthcare.

Aberman was at Regeneron for seven years, rising to the role of senior vice president of investor relations and strategy, having previously worked as a biotech analyst at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley and as director of business development at Antigenics.

Most recently he was chief executive and co-founder of XenImmune Therapeutics, a start-up aiming to treat cancer by marking tumour cells as foreign to the immune system – and before that was CEO of Quentis Therapeutics.

“Our goal is to cultivate an ecosystem where the next generation of biotech companies can thrive, drawing on the lessons learned and successes achieved at Regeneron and throughout our careers,” said Aberman. “Together, we will strive to identify and support groundbreaking advancements that push the boundaries of what’s possible in science and medicine.”

Markowitz, meanwhile, has joined Regeneron Ventures after a three-year stint at ARCH Venture Partners, where he was a senior partner and founded three companies, also serving as a board member and advisor for two others.

He was a senior vice president at Regeneron between 2017 and 2020, and formerly a transplant surgeon and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

According to Markowitz, the new fund “will invest for the long-term, agnostic to therapeutic area, technology, and stage of development.”

Regeneron’s move into the corporate VC area comes as it is still reaping the benefits of impressive sales growth from drugs like immunology therapy Dupixent (dupilumab) and cancer therapy Libtayo (cemiplimab), and facing the onset of biosimilar competition to ophthalmology blockbuster Eylea (aflibercept), which is seeing sales start to fade.

The launch of the fund comes amid signs biotech financings are rebounding after a slowdown in 2022 and 2023.