PureTech, a Boston, MA-based science and technology development and commercialization company focused on big healthcare problems, closed a $55m growth stage investment round.
Invesco Perpetual made the investment.
The company intends to use the funds to advance its existing pipeline forward and new healthcare related products and technologies.
Led by Dr. Robert Langer, Co-founder & Institute Professor at MIT, PureTech develops and commercializes technologies aimed at solving major healthcare problems. The company has has a thematic approach to starting companies, proposing solutions rooted in academic research and developing them together with a group of cross-disciplinary experts. It concentrates on a few major initiative areas at a time, generates and reviews approximately 800 technologies per year, and advances a handful of the most interesting programs through piloting and proof of concept.
Examples of PureTech’s activities in digital health include:
– Akili Interactive Labs, which is developing the first “electronic medicine” platform for remotely diagnosing and treating cognitive disorders like ADHD, autism spectrum disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. Akili has partnerships and collaborations with Pfizer, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and several leading research institutions;
– Vedanta Biosciences, developing a novel class of microbiome derived therapies for treating infectious disease, allergies and autoimmune disorders; Gelesis, developing an encapsulated device that swells in the stomach and small intestine to promote weight loss & glycemic control;
– Entrega, developing a smart pill for delivering nanoparticles and injectable drugs like insulin orally; and
– Tal Medical, “rebooting” the electrical circuits in the brain for treating depression.
In conjunction with the funding round, PureTech announced the appointment of three new Senior Partners:
– Dr. H Robert Horvitz, Nobel Laureate, David H. Koch Professor at MIT, and Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute;
– Mr. Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab and board member of Sony, the MacArthur Foundation, The New York Times, the Knight Foundation and Mozilla; and
– Dr. Raju Kucherlapati, Paul C. Cabot Professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics, co-founder of Millennium Pharmaceuticals & Abgenix, and Member of President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.
The new partners will join:
Dr. Robert Langer, PureTech Co-founder & David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT,
Dr. Ben Shapiro, PureTech Chairman, former EVP of Worldwide Basic & External Research at Merck,
Dr. John LaMattina, PureTech Senior Partner and former President of R & D at Pfizer Global Research and Development, and
Daphne Zohar, PureTech’s Founder & CEO.
FinSMEs
20/10/2014