Partners Innovation Fund, the investment vehicle of health system Partners Healthcare (PHC), has been extended to $100m following a $65m commitment to its Partners Innovation Fund II.
The cash injection came from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, two teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School that are part of PHC’s network. The institutions had already provided the fund’s initial $35m capital in 2007.
Partners Innovation Fund invests in companies exploiting technologies developed by PHC’s hospitals.
The fresh funding will enable it to accelerate development of early-stage technologies, attract more external investors and help secure PHC’s stake in companies through to later-stage funding rounds.
The fund has backed 25 companies to date and celebrated three exits worth a total of more than $1bn. Among those exits was biotechnology company Adheron, which was acquired by pharmaceutical firm Roche in October 2015 in a deal worth up to $580m.
Anaesthetics developer Annovation Biopharma was acquired by drug developer Medicines Company for an undisclosed sum in February 2015, while pharmaceutical firm Novartis purchased cancer immunotherapy producer CoStim for an undisclosed amount in 2014.