The venture shop behind Chroma Medicine, Myeloid Therapeutics and other biotechs is back with its second fund to capitalize close to a dozen more drug developers.
And Newpath Partners has already deployed some of the $350 million fund on four companies. Fund commitments came in at roughly “double the amount we needed,” said Thomas Cahill, M.D., Ph.D., founding partner, in an interview with Fierce Biotech.
“The reason we have four companies already is we’ve been iterating on these ideas for years ahead of time,” Cahill said, referring to the biotechs his firm has already doled out investments to.
The Boston biotech builder boasted seven companies in its first fund, which launched after the shop opened in 2018.
Newpath has participated in large-scale early-stage funding rounds, including $125 million for epigenetic editing biotech Chroma Medicine, $315 million for “search and replace” startup Prime Medicine, $25 million for “undruggable” enzymes company Exo Therapeutics, $60 million for cancer drug upstart Kojin Therapeutics and others.
With the new pool of capital, Newpath will continue working with field-leading academic partners at Scripps Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute, Columbia University Medical Center, Whitehead Institute and other groups. “Much” of the fund will be spent on these partners, the likes of which include Ben Cravatt, Ph.D.; Keith Joung, M.D., Ph.D.; David Liu, Ph.D.; Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D.; and others.
In all, Newpath said it has formed partnerships with 15 scientific founders and employed hundreds of people across its portfolio.
Among Newpath’s investors is Bain Capital co-chair and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca.
The venture firm is the latest to launch another life sciences fund. Frazier Healthcare Partners reeled in $830 million in October; Sanofi-backed Jeito Capital closed a $630 million fund for European biopharmas in September; Lightstone Ventures racked up a $375 million haul that month, too; and Moderna founder Flagship Pioneering reeled in a massive $2.2 billion for preemptive medicine in June.