At nearly the first anniversary of Christoph Westphal taking over the top job at SR One, the corporate venturing unit of UK-listed drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has seen a number of personnel moves.
Michael Diem has become vice-president of business development at the rare diseases division of GSK after joining SR One in 2005.
His internal move follows the departure of two other SR One partners. Mathieu Lane has left to become a vice-president of investment banking at alternative investments firm Guggenheim Partners and in January Carol Ashe became vice-president of corporate development at the specialty generics and technology department of Endo Pharmaceuticals.
In turn, Vikas Goyal joined SR One’s Boston office earlier in the year, after interning with the corporate venturing team since 2009. Brian Gallagher, who worked with Westphal at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, set up SR One’s Boston office last year.
Westphal moved over in April last year to head SR One after joining GSK in 2007 when he and colleagues Richard Aldrich and Michelle Dipp sold Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to the UK-listed company for $720m. Dipp is now senior vice president of GSK’s Center of Excellence for External Drug Discovery.
Founded in 1985, SR One has invested more than $600m in biotech companies and 70% of its current portfolio are US-based.
Its offices cover San Francisco (where Simeon George is based), Pennsylvania (where Rajeev Dadoo and Kent Gossett are), Boston, and the UK, where Deborah Harland and David Phillips work). SR One is also investigating whether to start investing in China.
In December, GSK set aside £50m ($78m) to launch a corporate venturing fund for the UK’s early-stage healthcare companies and spin-outs from universities.
Phillips said SR One was apportioning more money to the UK through the launch of the specific fund, although the overall programme remained the same and funded on an evergreen basis (where the money from exited portfolio companies is reinvested in new deals). He added: "In the current environment we are looking to put even more money to work to fill the gap left by commercial venture capital firms in early stage life sciences."
Westphal by email said: "We have been very active with new deals in 2010 and [are investing at the] same rapid pace [in] 2011."
Last year, SR One invested in five deals, including Semprus BioSciences’ $18m B round in December, iPierian and NeuroTherapeutics.
Separately, GSK and drugs peer Genzyme have committed to the inaugural $85m healthcare fund raised by Longwood Founders Management, which is managed by Sirtris trio Aldrich, Dipp and Westphal.