A venture capital firm based in the US is focused on incubating and investing in longevity-focused companies that aim to improve quality of life for older adults. The firm primarily invests at the Seed and Series A stages, with typical initial check sizes ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. The investment focus is on opportunities based in the United States.
The firm invests broadly across the life sciences and healthcare sectors, provided there is a clear connection to aging and longevity. Areas of interest include healthcare quality and cost, care capacity, healthcare benefits activation, aging in place, and financial longevity. The firm has made investments in medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health companies, and currently maintains an active portfolio of more than 15 companies. It generally does not invest in biotech. The firm is open to backing companies at the earliest stages of development.
There are no specific requirements regarding company structure or founding team experience. The firm is flexible in its role and may choose to lead or co-invest depending on the opportunity.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
A venture capital and private equity firm focuses on investments in the life sciences sector, with a primary emphasis on pharmaceuticals and therapeutics, and a secondary interest in medical devices. The firm invests from Series A through growth-stage transactions and is currently deploying capital from its third fund. Typical investment sizes range from $10 million to $40 million.
The firm prioritizes opportunities with a de-risked clinical development pathway, such as those involving repurposed or reformulated drugs, established mechanisms of action, 505(b)(2) regulatory strategies, or programs with proof-of-concept clinical data. For therapeutic assets, the firm primarily targets clinical-stage companies, ideally with completed Phase I trials. For medical devices, the firm considers clinical-stage opportunities with a clear regulatory and commercialization path. The firm is indication-agnostic but maintains a strong interest in 505(b)(2) products.
The firm seeks companies with a clearly defined path to regulatory approval, supported by robust intellectual property and market exclusivity. It plays an active role in its portfolio companies and takes a board seat in every investment.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
This early-stage venture fund, with offices in Western Europe, is led by a team with deep expertise across venture funding, company building, and therapeutic development. The firm is currently focused on cell and gene therapy, with particular interest in the manufacturing technologies that support these modalities.
The firm is especially interested in therapeutic platforms at the pre-clinical stage, including cutting-edge cell therapies for regenerative medicine and autoimmune conditions that require localized manufacturing capabilities. It seeks to support breakthrough technologies at the seed stage.
The firm typically takes an active role in its portfolio companies, frequently leading rounds, providing strategic guidance, and ensuring board-level engagement, either by taking a board seat directly or placing a qualified expert. In addition to company creation, the firm also invests in existing ventures, often syndicating with other institutional investors to support early-stage growth.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
A pharma-tech focused venture capital firm, founded in 2022 and headquartered in the US, invests in early-stage companies and also has the capability to incubate new ventures. The firm is driven by the belief that the pharmaceutical industry represents a strong and scalable customer base, and seeks technologies that align with or enhance the pharma value chain. While open to global opportunities, the firm shows a preference for companies based in the United States. Typical investment sizes range from $2 million to $5 million, and the firm is flexible in its role, able to lead or follow in financing rounds.
The firm invests across a broad spectrum of pharma-tech, including technologies targeting patients or providers, tech-bio platforms, drug discovery tools, AI-driven applications, supply chain innovations, and data-centric platforms. In essence, it is interested in any innovation that contributes to the pharmaceutical and life sciences value chain. The firm is disease-agnostic in its approach.
An active investor, the firm typically takes a board seat or observer role and prefers companies that have pharmaceutical companies as at least one major customer or are built with pharma as the primary target market.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
By Claire Jeong, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President of Investor Research, Asia BD, LSN
LSN is proud to announce our partnership with Enterprise SG for RESI JPM 2026, to foster meaningful conversations on global life science innovation, investment and cross-border collaboration. Learn how Singapore is a dynamic launchpad for innovation and home to cutting-edge startups ready to collaborate on your next breakthrough. Join us at our upcoming panel on January 12 to find out more!Â
As global healthcare challenges intensify, innovative biomedical technologies from Asia are stepping up to drive change, translating life science research into real-world solutions. Increasingly, investors, corporates, startups, and healthcare systems around the world are seeing the urgency in bridging the East and West to improve healthcare outcomes and deliver value-based care.
Singapore, located at the heart of Asia, is a dynamic hub for biomedical innovation, driven by a strong network of global investors, researchers, mentors, and innovators. With decades of sustained government investments and a robust talent pipeline from world-class universities and research institutes, it is home to over 500 biomedical and medtech companies. The ecosystem has attracted venture capitalists and venture builders like MPM BioImpact, Polaris Partners, and Flagship Pioneering, as well as global pharma leaders such as Pfizer, Roche, and Johnson & Johnson. These players work closely with government agencies, like Enterprise Singapore, that drive startup development, provide patient funding, expertise, infrastructure, and networks crucial for producing globally competitive solutions.
Singapore’s strategic position as a bridge between Asian and global markets enables it to play an outsized role in driving biomedical advancements. This works both ways, as a gateway for global companies to access the growing opportunities in Asia, and as a springboard for regional companies to expand worldwide. For example, through partnerships with healthcare organisations like Cedars-Sinai and Mayo Clinic in the US, Enterprise Singapore supports Singapore startups to test and scale their solutions in overseas markets, facilitating a bi-directional flow of innovation to improve healthcare for communities.
Join Enterprise Singapore at the ‘Asia Cross Border Investments Panel’ to explore how cross-border capital, talent, and technologies are converging to drive breakthroughs in precision medicine, innovative therapies, and next-generation diagnostics. The panel will take place on January 12, 2026, from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm at RESI JPM by LSN, held at the Marriott Marquis, San Francisco. Learn from prominent industry leaders how transcontinental partnerships, including those with Singapore, are shaping the future of healthcare innovation – from discovery to global commercialisation.
To join the conversation, please contact Claire Jeong, VP of Investor Research, Asia BD, at c.jeong@lifesciencenation.com.
This year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for the discovery of regulatory T cells (Tregs)— white blood cells whose role it is to suppress overactivation of our immune system. The prize was unusual in that Brunkow made her discoveries while leading an industry R&D team at Darwin Molecular (now defunct). Ramsdell and Sakaguchi are also co-founders of two prominent biotech companies developing Treg therapies: Ramsdell’s Sonoma Biotherapeutics is developing autologous Treg therapies against arthritis and hidradenitis suppurativa, together with a LFA3-IgG1 fusion molecule for depleting CD2+ effector T cells; and Sakaguchi’s Coya Therapeutics is developing a low-dose interleukin 2 (IL-2)/CTLA-IgG1 fusion combination for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative disorders; the Nobel prize likely helped boost Coya’s announcement in October to raise $20 million in follow-on funding on the public markets.
Tregs suppress the ability of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) to present antigen to and co-stimulate effector T cells (Teff). In the lymph nodes, the TCR of a Treg cell binds the antigen–major histocompatibility complex (MHC) displayed on the APC, while Treg CTLA4 binds CD80 and CD86 on the APC, blocking Teff access to the same antigen. Tregs also release regulatory cytokines, such as IL-10 and transforming growth factor β (TGFβ), to suppress inflammation. In addition, Tregs express the high-affinity IL-2 receptor CD25, which outcompetes the IL-2 receptor of Teffs. Tregs also express the CD39 and CD73, ectonucleases that convert ATP to adenosine, another anti-inflammatory molecule. Last, Tregs establish a long-lasting tolerogenic environment by turning Teffs into Tregs. Source: Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
Tregs have long attracted the attention of drug developers interested in autoimmune conditions, diseases where the immune system is overactive. But progress in this field has been slow, and the first clinical results for T-reg cell therapies are only now beginning to emerge in liver transplantation and kidney transplantation. (Low-dose IL-2 treatments that promote Tregs have also begun to show promise in lupus and systemic sclerosis patients.)
The overarching idea behind Treg cell therapy has been to isolate these cells from a patient, introduce/upregulate expression of the FOXP3 transcription factor that marks them from other T cells, and expand them before giving them back to the patient.
Tregs are commonly isolated based on their expression of CD4+ CD25high CD127− and CD45RA+. CD4+ T cells can also be engineered to express FOXP3, the master regulator of Treg development. Tregs can be expanded ex vivo using a polyclonal T cell stimulus like low-dose IL2, small molecules like rapamycin, or (preferably) exposing them to APCs carrying disease-relevant antigens, aiming to enrich the Treg population for a specific antigen. Tregs can also be engineered by expressing a TCR or CAR. The resulting cells are then administered to patients, often together with other immunosuppressive agents. Gene editing has also been proposed as a mechanism to enhance the function and stability of Tregs. Source: Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
Early attempts to develop this autologous therapy failed in part because Tregs are less numerous in the peripheral blood than effector CD4/CD8 T cells, difficult to isolate and problematic to expand. Moreover, the isolated Tregs are polyclonal, targeting multiple antigens. Approaches that expanded this unmodified polyclonal population of cells and put them back into patients resulted in a ‘diluted’, clinically insignificant, therapeutic effect.
To address this problem, companies are now turning to leverage advances in the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy field. A whole slew of Treg cell therapies is being engineered with CARs or T-cell receptors (TCRs), allowing targeting to specific antigens in specific organs.
As we mentioned above, the most advanced of these are in the organ-transplantation field, where chronic immunosuppression renders patients susceptible to infections that can be lethal. Sangamo Therapeutics’ TX200 and Quell Therapeutics’ QEL-001 are CAR-Treg therapies for renal- and liver-transplant rejection, respectively. These assets, which are in phase 1/2, both bind to human leukocyte antigen HLA-A2, which is exclusively expressed on the transplanted donor organ, ensuring that the Tregs travel exclusively to the place where they are needed. Elsewhere, Sonoma is also developing an autologous CAR-Treg therapy, SBT-77-7101, that targets citrullinated proteins abundant in rheumatoid arthritis (for which Sonoma recently announced positive interim phase 1 data) and the skin condition hidradenitis suppurativa.
A second focus for companies has been on TCR-engineered Tregs. The great theoretical advantages of TCRs over CARs are that 1) they have high sensitivity at low antigen density, 2) they focus exclusively on antigen-presenting cells which then reeducate/suppress effector T cells; 3) they don’t bind soluble antigen and 4) most autoimmune diseases are driven by intracellular proteins presented as processed peptides in the context of HLA. As yet, however, only a few companies are pursuing the approach. One example is GentiBio, which is developing GNTI-122 for type 1 diabetes. This Treg product expresses a TCR targeting a fragment (IGRP 305–324) of the pancreatic islet-specific antigen glucose-6-phosphatase catalytic subunit-related protein (IGRP). Another pioneer in this area, Abata Therapeutics, had also been developing a TCR-engineered Treg therapy (targeting myelin peptide/HLA-DRB1*15:01 for multiple sclerosis); however, the frosty financing environment in the first half of 2025 meant it ran out of cash and Abata closed its doors in August.
One challenge that all Treg cell therapies face is the plasticity of these cells and their tendency to shape shift into effector T cells, a phenotypic change that, in the therapeutic setting, could lower efficacy or even exacerbate pathology. One approach to address this problem has been to modify the cells by overexpressing the transcription factor FOXP3, the master regulator of Treg development. For example, as methylation of the FOXP3 promoter under inflammatory conditions can turn Tregs Into effector T cells, Quell’s Tregs are engineered with a methylation-resistant FOXP3 that compels the cells to remain in their suppressor phenotype. And to bring us back to where we started, Nobel laureate Sakaguchi turns out to be a serial entrepreneur, founding another company, Regcell, that recently relocated from Japan to the US on the back of a $45.8 million financing back in March. The company is using small-molecule CDK8/19 inhibitors that act as epigenetic modulators to lock in FOXP3+ Tregs that show a stable suppressive phenotype in vivo.
But Treg cell therapies still face stiff competition. Ironically, perhaps, from their antithesis: the effector CAR-T cell. Pioneering work by Georg Schett’s group at Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg has galvanized numerous efforts to develop CAR-T depleters of pathogenic B-cell or plasma-cell subsets in autoimmune conditions. Evidence is growing for the clinical efficacy of this approach in diseases such as lupus or myasthenia gravis.
But the holy grail would be to dispense with cell therapy altogether and promote Treg activity in situ, without the need for purification and modification/expansion outside the body. By focusing on injectable biologics, many companies can bring products to market that are easily accommodated into current clinical practice, dispensing with the need for leukopheresis (an approach alien to most rheumatologists) and the complex logistics of ex vivo cell therapy.
The Treg field can rightly celebrate its Nobel recognition and the progress made towards bringing this cell type to patients. Although it will likely be several years before we gain a full picture of how Treg biology can be leveraged to fight autoimmune disease, the field eagerly awaits the readout from early efficacy trials of cell therapies and potentially an FDA-approved product for the biologics in later development.
This venture capital firm with offices in the US is exclusively focused on the AI transformation of healthcare, operating through a physician-centric model that leverages a broad network of medical professionals actively involved in both the investment process and the development of AI solutions, particularly in medical imaging.
The firm invests at the pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stages, with typical check sizes ranging from $1 million to $2 million. While most investments have been made in U.S.-based companies, the firm remains open to international opportunities, including those in Europe and Asia.
Investment focus is tightly concentrated on disruptive AI-driven technologies in the medical imaging market. The firm does not invest in traditional therapeutics or medical devices, and is currently not considering opportunities outside of AI-centric digital health technologies related to imaging. It is open to investing in companies as early as the pre-prototype stage, provided they are aligned with the firm’s strategic thesis.
The firm seeks to partner with highly driven management teams who possess deep domain expertise across imaging, artificial intelligence, and medical software. While the firm typically co-invests, it maintains an active, hands-on approach, especially through the support of its physician investor network, which helps accelerate product development and clinical relevance.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
The firm is focused on therapeutics companies and does not invest in medical devices, diagnostics, or digital health. The firm is open to considering assets of very early stages, even those as early as lead optimization phase. The firm considers various modalities, including antibodies, small molecules, and cell therapy. Currently, the firm is not interested in gene therapy. Indication-wise, the firm is most interested in oncology and autoimmune diseases but has recently looked at fibrotic diseases and certain rare diseases as well.
The firm is opportunistic across all subsectors of healthcare. Within MedTech, the firm is most interested in medical devices, artificial intelligence, robotics, and mobile health. The firm is seeking post-prototype innovations that are FDA cleared or are close to receiving clearance. Within therapeutics, the firm is interested in therapeutics for large disease markets such as oncology, neurology, and metabolic diseases. The firm is open to all modalities with a special interest in immunotherapy and cell therapy.
A strategic investment firm of a large global pharmaceutical makes investments ranging from $5 million to $30 million, acting either as a sole investor or within a syndicate. The firm is open to considering therapeutic opportunities globally, but only if the company is pursuing a market opportunity in the USA and is in dialogue with the US FDA.
The firm is currently looking for new investment opportunities in enterprise software, medical devices, and the healthcare IT space. The firm will invest in 510k devices and healthcare IT companies, and it is very opportunistic in terms of indications. In the past, the firm was active in medical device companies developing dental devices, endovascular innovation devices, and women’s health devices.
A venture capital firm founded in 2005 has multiple offices throughout Asia, New York, and San Diego. The firm has closed its fifth fund in 2017 and is currently raising a sixth fund, which the firm is targeting to be the largest fund to date. The firm continues to actively seek investment opportunities across a […]
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