Mission Bay Capital, the venture capital arm of University of California-aligned commercialisation office California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), has raised $60m for its latest fund from limited partners including several corporates.
Pharmaceutical firms Eli Lilly and Astellas contributed, the latter through its Astellas Venture Management unit, as did law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Zcube, the open innovation arm of chemical and pharmaceutical producer Zambon.
Private equity firm Banyan Pacific Capital, venture capital firm Mayfield and the University of California-owned UC Investments were also among the LPs, as were unnamed investors including undisclosed family offices.
The vehicle is Mission Bay’s third life sciences fund and will follow its predecessors in backing biotech-focused spinouts and concepts from its Bay Area-based life sciences incubator, MBC BioLabs. QB3’s activities span three UC campuses – UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz.
The second Mission Bay fund closed at $25m in 2015, raising cash from LPs including biotechnology producer Novozymes, real estate developer Sobrato Organisation’s corporate venturing unit, Sobrato Capital, and UCSF Foundation, the investment arm of University of California, San Francisco.
Douglas Crawford, managing director of Mission Bay Capital, said: “We are thrilled to have a fresh pool of capital to invest into promising young companies.
“The more than doubling of our fund from $25m in Fund II to $60m in Fund III is aligned with the expansion of our incubators in San Carlos and the addition of experienced bio-entrepreneur Robert Blazej to our management team.
“Alongside our new and returning investors, we look forward to supporting even more exciting early-stage biotechs.”
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.