Barbara Dalton has run US-listed drugs company Pfizer’s corporate venturing unit since she joined in 2007 as vice-president. But her knowledge of the industry stretches back nearly a quarter of a century to when she started out as president of UK-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline’s CVC unit, SR One, in 1993.
She joined corporate venturing unit Pfizer Venture Investments from EuclidSR Partners, a venture firm backed by GlaxoSmithKline, where she worked from 2000 to 2007 after a seven-year stint at SR One. At EuclidSR she worked with Elaine Jones, who also joined her at Pfizer Venture Investments, while the third member of the team, Bill Burkoth, was named a GCV Rising Star last year.
Her small team at Pfizer puts out about $50m a year in cheque sizes of up to $10m a round and is both active and successful. Her Pfizer profile says she has managed more than 30 fund investments and 80 diverse company investments in the US and Europe and has had direct investing responsibility for biotechnology therapeutic and platform companies, as well as some healthcare IT and service businesses, including Alere, Ciphergen, Corixa, Genset, Gliatech, Gryphon, iJet, Lexicon, OGS, Third Wave, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals.
Pfizer had been an earlier backer of Epic Sciences, a cancer diagnostics specialist that has just added $40m in its D round, while Pfizer and AbbVie have added $10m to develop Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals’ neurodegenerative disease drugs.
Dalton has a PhD in microbiology and immunology from Medical College of Pennsylvania.