Archive | January, 2016

RESI@TMCx Take 2: LSN, JLABS and TMCx Team-up Again for Early Stage Investor Event

21 Jan

By Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN

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On April 11th, Life Science Nation will be bringing together hundreds of senior level executives from investment firms, corporate strategics, and emerging biotech, medtech and digital health companies to the TMCx accelerator space at the Texas Medical Center in Houston. The recent RESI Conference in San Francisco had nearly 800 registrants and a full partnering floor. The event drew so much interest that registration was shut down a week prior to the event – and we received many regretful notes from those who wished they’d signed up sooner!

In addition to the firepower that LSN brings to the table, TMCx will be showcasing their second class of digital health and medical device technologies which will be announced later this month, and JLABS will be bringing senior executives from Johnson & Johnson and a number of entrepreneurs from the JLABS incubators.

RESI@TMCx will be a venue for entrepreneurs to meet with all 10 categories of investors LSN tracks including Family offices, Corporate Venture Funds, Angel Groups, Venture Philanthropy, Venture Capital and more. The RESI Partnering Forum will allow fundraising executives to identify and book up to 16 meetings with those diverse life science investors who fit their company’s technology sector and stage of development. Through an expansive series of investor panels, RESI @ TMCx will present current topics covering investment mandates and procedures for identifying and qualifying candidates. Additionally, RESI’s workshops will provide more in-depth advice on every aspect of the fundraising process.

 

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RESI@JPM Innovation Challenge – Winners Announced

21 Jan

By Nono Hu, Director of Marketing, LSN

Last week, LSN’s Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference brought together approximately 350 early stage investors and 300 biotech, medtech and healthcare IT entrepreneurs, our largest crowd to date. The RESI Innovation Challenge received a record number of applicants last fall. The 30 most innovative applicants were hand selected by Life Science Nation’s internal scientific review board and presented their technologies in an exhibition-style format throughout the full-day conference. Here are the top 3 winners!

First Prize Winner: ClearSight

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ClearSight LLC is commercializing a novel intraocular lens (IOL), the ClearSight IOL, designed to prevent clouding of the lens known as posterior capsular opacification (PCO). PCO is the most frequent surgical complications from cataract surgery, occurring in 25% of patients and costing the U.S. healthcare system $350 million/year. Animal data demonstrates that the ClearSight IOL reduces PCO by 100% in a rabbit model, due to the patent-protected ClearSight IOL design and the addition of a novel microscopic surface texture to prevent cell migration that leads to clouding of the lens. IOLs represent a $1.1 billion U.S. market and $3.7 billion global market.

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George Ayd, Assistant Vice President, MedMarc; Shravanthi Reddy, COO, ClearSight

 

Second Prize Winner: Eve Medical

03Eve Medical is a Toronto-based medical device company dedicated to improving women’s health. Eve’s core product HerSwab™ makes it easy for women to collect their own samples at home or in clinic to test for common infections that cause cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. This saves time, provides privacy and minimizes invasiveness. By reduce barriers to screening, and improving compliance, Eve Medical and HerSwab™ can empower under-served women, improve the reach of existing programs, increase test volumes, and reduce costs for healthcare systems.

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Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical; Dennis Ford, CEO, LSN

 

Third Prize Winner: Briteseed

05The surgeon’s lack of tactile feedback during minimally invasive laparoscopic and robotic surgery leads to difficulty in safely visualizing and manipulating blood vessels, ureters, and bile ducts. Briteseed combats this problem by building smart surgical tools using low-cost optical technology to non-invasively visualize both between and near the jaws of a surgical tool in real time. This combination hardware and software solution is flexible enough to be seamlessly integrated into a spectrum of surgical tools. These smart tools will provide imaging and diagnostic capabilities without interrupting surgical workflow, increasing user adoption. By raising the quality and decreasing overall cost of care, Briteseed provides value to surgeons and the hospital administrations that support them.

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Michael Quigley, VP of Market Research, LSN; Mayank Vijay, Head of BD and Operations & Co-founder, Briteseed

 

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RESI@TMCx: Innovators Are Invited To Apply

21 Jan

By Lucy Parkinson, Director of Research, LSN

Congratulations to Clearsight, Eve Medical, and Briteseed for their success in the RESI Innovation Challenge last week; at LSN, we hope that the success of these companies in RESI’s virtual fundraising challenge translates into real investor dollars!

If you’re interested in seeing your company’s name up there on the winner’s list, you can now apply to the RESI@TMCx Innovation Challenge for the conference on April 11, 2016. Successful applicants will be provided with a spot in the RESI Exhibitor Hall, and the challenge provides entrepreneurs with a way to engage with RESI’s audience of active life science investors throughout the event. All RESI attendees are provided with “RESI Cash” tokens that they can allocate to the entrepreneurs whose technologies they expect will be most successful. At the end of the day, the capital invested will be tallied up and the top 3 participants will be announced.

This exhibition-style, interaction-focused format was developed by LSN because we’ve found more traditional “pitch contests” to be of poor value for startups. If there are any active life science investors viewing a pitch session (and we’ve found that many investors just aren’t interested in this format), they don’t have a direct way to interact with the pitcher and offer their feedback. RESI therefore focuses on providing startups with the opportunity to meet investors face to face, both through one-on-one meetings and informal networking, and the RESI Innovation Challenge provides entrepreneurs with an eye-catching way to make those in-depth conversations happen.

Previous RESI Innovation Challenge winners include:

Clearsight (Aurora, CO)

Rna Diagnostics (Toronto, ON)

Redox (Madison, WI)

Empiriko (Newton, MA)

ORIG3N (Boston, MA)

Kineta (Seattle, WA)

If you’re developing a cutting-edge biotech or medtech product, apply to the RESI Innovation Challenge to put your technology into the spotlight. We’ll look forward to seeing you at RESI@TMCx.

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Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 1: Quebec VC Seeks Pre-Revenue Medtech, Diagnostics & Healthcare IT

21 Jan

A venture capital fund created in 2013 and based in Canada with connections to the European market is looking for companies located in Canada and the United States. The firm makes equity investments in progressive stages, ranging between 500k – $5m and typically leads the round – although the firm is open to co-investing. The firm is interested in pre-revenue companies within one year of generating revenue, all the way up to expansion stage.

The firm is interested in anything with a technology aspect – including medical devices, diagnostics, healthcare IT, industrial & telecom. The firm is not interested in drug discovery and is open to all indication areas. The firm will consider regulatory devices and looks for technologies with a strong competitive advantage.

The firm looks for companies led by strong, experienced and capable teams as the firm makes minority stake investments. The firm looks for management teams who understand the regulatory and competitive landscape and are familiar with their chosen subsector and indication area. Although the firm looks for companies backed by strong technology, the firm puts more emphasis on management team capabilities and will not invest in a company unless this requirement is met. The firm takes a board seat on all investments.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 2: VC Seeks Medical Devices for China Market

21 Jan

A Chinese venture capital firm with offices in Shanghai and Beijing has raised two funds to date, with its second fund raised in 2011 at USD 125 million. The firm mainly invests in early stage high-growth technology businesses but has expanded its interest into medical technology. The firm generally allocates USD 5-10 million per company, and focuses 70% domestically and 30% on the US. The firm is interested in companies that have a China angle, specifically, developing products relevant to the Chinese market. The firm is actively seeking new investment opportunities.

In healthcare, the firm is currently looking for medical devices that address a large market in China. IVD and devices with a software component are of high interest. The firm is opportunistic in terms of subsectors and considers all classes of devices. In terms of the stage of development, the firm prefers devices that have regulatory approval (preferably CE mark); ideally, the device should be ready for CFDA. However, the firm will also consider devices in the final stages of clinical trials.

The firm can invest globally but the firm is only interested in companies that have a China angle, i.e. Chinese-led and/or developing products for the Chinese market. The firm has no revenue requirements.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 3: Dedicated Healthcare IT Fund Seeking Global Opportunities

21 Jan

An early-stage healthcare technology venture capital investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts recently raised $200 million for its first dedicated healthcare technology-focused fund in 2015. The firm primarily invests in companies in the seed, series A and B stages targeting healthcare technology and services and is seeking 8-10 new investments within the next year. The firm typically invests an initial range of $500K-$5M and may go up to investing $10M-$15M per company overall, though the size may vary depending on the opportunity. The firm primarily invests in companies based in the US, though is open to companies on a global level. The firm seeks to be a significant investor in any of its portfolio companies and will often serve on the boards of those companies.

In the healthcare technology sector, the firm is actively seeking new investments in healthcare software and services sectors with a specific focus on healthcare analytics, healthcare infrastructure, and novel service delivery models. The firm has a specific interest in transformational technologies and services that enable value-based healthcare and leverage wireless, data and analytics technologies. The firm currently is not focused on therapeutics or medical device investment opportunities, though has interest in medical devices with a software/data component, such as sensors. The firm may be open to 510K devices, however, it is not interested in PMA devices. The firm is indication agnostic and invests only in pre-revenue early stage products.

The firm seeks to invest in privately held companies with a strong and experience management team. The group prefers to invest in companies with cutting-edge technologies and large market potential.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com

Hot Life Science Investor Mandate 4: US Fund Focused On Clinical-Stage Biopharma Opportunities

21 Jan

A firm based in California with additional offices throughout the USA and Asia invests broadly in the healthcare and technology sectors, in both venture and growth-stage financing rounds. The firm has a large fund that invests only in rounds that raise $10 million or more. The firm makes investments globally.

Within healthcare, the firm focuses on biopharma, and also invests in medical devices, healthcare IT and healthcare service providers. The firm is not currently seeking opportunities in diagnostics. In biopharma, the firm prefers to invest in companies that have obtained data from human clinical trials; however, the firm also invests in breakthrough therapeutic technologies at the preclinical stage. In medical devices, the firm only invests in growth-stage companies with an approved product and initial revenues; the firm prefers to invest in breakthrough device technologies and avoids commodity markets. The firm has a broad portfolio and is open to any indication area, but has a particular focus in oncology and orphan diseases, and typically does not invest in infectious diseases.

Within the service provision and IT sectors, the firm is focused on opportunities that provide cost savings to the healthcare system; in this sector, the firm’s expertise is primarily in companies that target healthcare providers as customers, but the firm is also open to considering other areas of the services/IT space. The firm has no fixed requirements for companies or management teams.

If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com

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