Profiles of Two Iconoclasts
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
In recent years, most venture capital firms have focused on investing in companies with well-developed product pipelines. In this issue of START-UP, we profile two trendsetters: Fred Cohen, managing director at Texas Pacific Group Ventures; and Christoph Westphal, formerly a partner at Polaris Ventures and now vice chairman and CEO of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. Both men are physician scientists turned investors, who have tapped into their scientific and clinical knowledge to make investments in "high concept" discovery stage companies. And although the investments are intriguing, it's too early to say whether or not the strategies adopted by these two men will yield returns for their backers.
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Sirtris Satisfies GSK's M&A Appetite
Pathway-oriented platforms are rare, and dealmaking around them can be complicated: partner too early or for too little and you risk giving away the store. But Sirtris pulled it off, via M&A, when GSK tendered a whopping $720 million for it in April. The deal is another example of Pharma's interest in platform biotechs and its hunger for innovation. But the unique nature of Sirtris's platform -- broad, but around a single set of biological targets -- makes it more one-off than trend-setting.
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