In drugs, Switzerland-based Novartis has led the $100m series C round for US-based Pliant Therapeutics having paid $80m in October to partner with the company in developing one of its fibrosis treatments.
This is traditional corporate venture capital within life sciences. Find a novel small molecule that can target a protein (in this case) and develop a drug that might safely prevent or treat a healthcare issue.
This is a very long, drawn-out process usually costing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars over sometimes decades before reaching the patient. This has more in common with large industrial venture deals where going from pilot to factory is an extra challenge and given many of the drug companies were spun out of chemical companies probably no surprise.
On the other side Element Science has raised $145.6m from a consortium including search engine provider Alphabet’s GV (formerly Google Ventures) corporate venturing unit.
This money will help Element develop its heart-focused personal defibrillator patch as part of a family of digital wearables based on the Jewel platform, which involves a machine learning algorithm and electromechanical medical device development.
This hardware has more in common with information technology in development hardware and software and how groups such as Apple are using its watch to monitor people’s health and are medically approved.
Both CVC approaches take a lot of money but speed of rollout and development can be substantially quicker the IT way – Apple’s watches now sell more than all of Switzerland’s analogue industry less than two years after US regulatory approval.
