What You Should Know: - Lightstone Ventures today announced the closing of Lightstone Ventures III with $375M in capital commitments, to invest in early-stage companies developing high-impact therapeutics and technologies. - The new fund was oversubscribed, exceeding the firm’s targeted raise, and included strong support from both new and existing limited partners. With the closing Fund III, Lightstone Ventures also announced the appointments of Christina Isacson, Ph.D., as Partner and
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Fresenius Medical Invests Additional $25M in Biotech Platform Humacyte
What You Should Know: Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) today announced its plans to invest an additional $25 million in clinical-stage biotechnology platform company Humacyte following the extension of its collaboration in June. Fresenius Medical Care acquired a stake in Humacyte in 2018 for $150M as part of a strategic partnership. Following the merger of Humacyte with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), FMC is increasing its position in the newly combined
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5-Step Guide to Hiring AI Talent for Digital Health, Biotech & Life Sciences Companies
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will disrupt healthcare's destiny for good. Here are five steps digital health startups can take to find the premier talent to get the job done. Not too long ago, AI was the topic of futuristic movies. What was once a fictional draw at the Box Office is now a reality in offices worldwide. AI is everywhere and rapidly transforming the way we work. What remains scarce though is the technical talent in healthcare to see this tech revolution through. AI
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Perceptive Advisors Closes $515M Early-Stage Biotech Fund
What You Should Know: - Perceptive Advisors and biotech accelerator Xontogeny, focused on seed investment, incubation and collaboration, have raised their second venture capital fund, the Perceptive Xontogeny Ventures Fund II (PXV Fund II), totaling an over-subscribed $515 million. This more than triples Assets Under Management to more than $700M in less than two years. - The
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Led by Sequoia, Benchling Raises $200M to Accelerate R&D Cloud Platform
- Today Benchling, the leading life and sciences R&D cloud, announced a $200M Series E raise led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities and joined by Altimeter Capital, Byers Capital, and Elad Gil. This funding will be used to aggressively invest in product development and global expansion to support enterprise customers. The raise is also joined by existing investors Thrive Capital, Benchmark, Menlo Ventures, Alkeon Capital, ICONIQ, Lux Capital, Spark Capital, and Lead Edge Capital. -
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Q1 2021 Health IT/Digital Health PC/VE, M&A, IPOs/ SPACs Activity
The first quarter of 2021 has been one of investor optimism as the vaccine rollout continues ahead of expectations and economic activity begins to accelerate in response. Within the Health IT industry, the already strong investment and M&A trends seen in 2020 have only accelerated. Over the course of the quarter, we observed $7 billion in private equity and venture capital investment across 158 companies. By comparison, Q1 of 2020 saw $3.2 billion and 127 investments. Health IT
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Biospecimen Procurement for R&D Needs to Look More Like an Online Marketplace
As healthcare digitizes everything from insurance claims to clinical decisions, some functions remain frustratingly analog, old school, and inefficient. One such function is the distribution of human biospecimens necessary for medical research. Specimens are essential in providing much of the data that researchers examine, EHRs capture, and scientific databases aggregate. Unfortunately, the distribution of specimens and their data to researchers is woefully outdated and inefficient. Frankly,
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Morehouse College, Verily Announces $575k Endowed Life Sciences Scholarship to Support STEM Careers
- Today, Verily announced a partnership with Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, to establish an endowed award of $575,000 to fund a new Verily Scholars Program. - The program will provide an annual scholarship to an exceptional Morehouse student majoring in STEM (Science, Technology, Mathematics, and Engineering) careers and will also fund up to three annual all-expenses paid summer internships at Verily. Verily looks forward to connecting Morehouse scholars to the biotech and
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bene : studio Launches HealthTech Product Accelerator Starting April 1st
What You Should Know: - bene : studio, a San Francisco, CA-based global digital product consultancy, announced its non-equity, online HealthTech Product Accelerator, starting on April 1st. The accelerator will focus exclusively on the enhancement of the participating companies' design and technology. - This accelerator is tailored to advanced Health Tech startups with $1M+ yearly revenue or overall funding, with programs including, but not limited to, Telehealth, IoMT devices, Biotech, and
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Flywheel Nabs $15M for Next-Gen Informatics Platform for Medical Research & Collaboration
What You Should Know: - Minneapolis-based digital health startup Flywheel raies $15M in Series B funding to advance the use of AI in clinical trials co-led by Beringea and 8VC including participation from Novartis dRx Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Great North Labs, iSelect and Argonautic Ventures. - By leveraging cloud scalability and automating research workflows, Flywheel helps organizations scale research data and analysis, improve scientific collaboration and
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