It is hard to keep corporations out of venturing, it appears.
In early 2012, US-based biotech company Biogen Idec closed its corporate venturing unit in favour of making investments in strategic partnerships with mid-sized companies.
Launched in 2004, one year after the company was created from a merger between pharmaceutical companies Biogen and Idec, Biogen Idec’s corporate venturing division, the New Ventures Group, had invested $200m over about eight years.
The unit was shut down in favour of further licensing partnerships with pharmaceutical companies which are working on drugs in a later stage of development.
This week, however, Ataxion, a US-based developer of therapies for diseases, raised $17m in its series A round from a consortium including biotech firm Biogen Idec and venture capital firm Atlas Ventures.
This is promising for other groups, such as Canada and South Africa-based energy groups Cenovus and Sasol and Ireland-based biotech Shire, which have decided against continuing or forming a formal corporate venturing programme, senior executives at all three companies said.
In addition to joining the round, Biogen is providing research and development funding and other help to Ataxion and has agreed an option to acquire Ataxion at for an undisclosed amount if agreed milestones are reached.
News provider Xconomy after an interview with Atlas said Biogen would “give some insight into which clinical path it would be most interested in as a potential acquirer”.
And the deal is not as early as it’s A-round would suggest and so fits with Biogen’s revised corporate venturing strategy. Ataxion’s research is based in part from work carried out by Denmark-based NeuroSearch before its closure and sale of assets, including to Saniona. In July 2013, Denmark-based development company Saniona assigned all rights to its ion channel ataxia program to a then-newly established Boston, Massachussetts-based company, Ataxion, against an ownership in Ataxion.
At the same time Saniona entered into a 15-month drug discovery collaboration alliance with Ataxion covering novel ion channel modulators for symptomatic and disease modifying treatment of ataxias, a group of severe neurodegenerative motor disorders. Ataxion has an option to extend the duration of the collaboration against additional funding. Ataxion will assume responsibility for further development and commercialization of drug candidates. For each product successfully developed and marketed from the Ataxion program, Saniona is entitled to royalties on product sales. Claud Braestrup, chairman of Sanonia, is on Ataxion’s board and has been joined by Steven Holtzman, executive vice-president of corporate development at Biogen, and Kevin Koch, senior vice-president of research and development, (alongside Atlas’ David Grayzel and Jean-Francois Formela).
Grayzel is managing director of Atlas Venture Development Corp (AVDC), which the firm said was an “asset-centric structure that partners with pharma and biotech companies to develop late preclinical and clinical stage programs through to key value inflection points”.
AVDC has created Arteaus Therapeutics and Annovation Biopharma. Arteaus was funded by Atlas and VC peer Orbimed for migraine prevention. Annovation was funded by Atlas, corporate venturing units Partners Innovation, and Medicines Company and is developing anesthesia therapies.
AVDC, therefore, promises a more partnership-based approach to corporate venturing – a level of maturity that seems to fit even reluctant corporations in this area – and similar to how groups in other sectors, such as Cisco’s Insieme deal that promises a purchase at a set price if milestones are reached.
Separately, the battle between US and China for the number of big deals, of at least $100m, as detailed in this column last week has continued this week with Google investing in Cludera’s $160m round, while China-based Alibaba has provided the bulk of Tango’s $280m D round.