Investment firm Deerfield Management launched a $550m healthcare fund yesterday backed by Seattle Children’s Hospital, New York-Presbyterian Hospital and cancer research centre Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Deerfield Healthcare Innovations Fund’s other limited partners include Princeton and Northwestern Universities and philanthropic organisation Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The fund will seek out companies working on treatments for genetic diseases, orphan diseases and cancer. It will also invest in startups that are creating new technologies to develop and deliver drugs.
Returns on investments not allocated to the fund’s LPs will be donated to Deerfield’s charitable arm, the Deerfield Partnership Foundation. The Foundation funds healthcare for underserved children and further healthcare research.
James Flynn, president and managing partner of Deerfield, said: “The unprecedented advances in our understanding of the biology of disease combined with the application of new technologies allow for life-altering changes in medical practice.
“The pullback in funding that has occurred for these innovations over the last decade could not have happened at a worse time.
“Our unique model of producing research through the Deerfield Institute and our philanthropic endeavours through the Deerfield Foundation allows us to provide value to innovative institutions, companies and patients that goes well beyond capital.”