Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VERV) is a biotechnology company created with a singular focus: to protect the world from heart disease. Verve is developing therapies to safely edit the genome of adults and confer lifelong protection from coronary artery disease, the most common form of heart disease and the leading cause of death worldwide.
Sector: Life Sciences
Connie Li
Connie is a Principal on the life sciences team at F-Prime based in San Francisco. She focuses primarily on biotechnology investments and also works closely with the Eight Roads Ventures China team to manage F-Prime’s existing and new investment efforts in China. Connie joined F-Prime in 2019, and has been involved in a number of company formation efforts including K36 Tx, Skyline, Pediatrix, and AlphaGen. Prior to joining F-Prime, Connie was a Consultant with IQVIA in New York, where she advised biopharmaceutical companies on commercial, development, and portfolio strategy topics.
Connie holds an M.B.A from Harvard Business School, M.S. from the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and a B.S.E. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Arvelle Therapeutics
Arvelle Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company with the mission of bringing innovative solutions to patients suffering from CNS disorders. Arvelle is responsible for the development and commercialization of cenobamate, an investigational antiepileptic drug, in the European market. Arvelle Therapeutics was acquired by Angelini Pharma in January 2021.
Nocion Therapeutics
Nocion Therapeutics, a neuroinflammation and analgesic company discovering and developing novel pharmaceutical treatments for various indications including cough, pain, and itch.
Caplin Point Laboratories
Caplin Point Laboratories Limited is a fast growing pharmaceutical company with a unique business model catering predominantly to emerging markets of Latin America and Africa. Caplin Point Laboratories Limited has state of the art manufacturing facilities that cater to a complete range of finished dosage forms. The Company has also entered regulated markets such as US through its Wholly Owned Subsidiary Caplin Steriles Limited.
ABK Biomedical, Inc.
ABK Biomedical is organized to research, develop and commercialize breakthrough medical device therapies to improve treatment outcomes and the lives of patients with benign and malignant hypervascular tumors. Specifically, ABK holds intellectual property in the focus area of inorganic polymer microspheres, targeted at the growing field of embolotherapy within the Interventional Radiology/Interventional Oncology medical disciplines. The company possesses advanced intellectual capital and its own R&D and manufacturing facilities for developing and commercializing unique, breakthrough embolotherapy products.
Martin Taylor, PhD
Martin is Principal based in the Cambridge office. Martin’s primary area of interest is in biotechnology investments in a range of therapeutic areas including oncology, cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases. Martin joined F-Prime’s London office in 2019, where he has worked on several biotechnology company creation efforts and investments in Europe, including ARTBIO, CHARM Therapeutics and Tenpoint Therapeutics.
Prior to joining F-Prime, he was a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he researched molecular mechanisms of DNA replication. Martin completed his PhD at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, prior to its incorporation into the Francis Crick Institute, investigating DNA repair by homologous recombination. His research has been published in several original articles in journals such as Cell, Nature and Molecular Cell. Martin also holds BA and MSci degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge.
Carlos Bustamante, PhD
Carlos Bustamante joined F-Prime in January 2019 as a Venture Partner based in the San Francisco office, and is focused on the application of data science and genomics technology to problems in medicine, agriculture, and biology. He is currently on leave from Stanford University where he is a Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Genetics, and (by courtesy) Biology, was founding Director of the Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics and is Inaugural Chair of the Department of Biomedical Data Science.
Carlos has a passion for building new academic units, non-profits, and companies to solve pressing scientific challenges. He is currently a Director at EdenRoc Sciences, LLC and Etalon DX, founder of Arc Bio, LLC and CDB Consulting LTD., and has served as an SAB member for more than a dozen companies.
Carlos received his PhD in Biology and MS in Statistics from Harvard University.
Abelian Therapeutics
Nascent biotech company harnessing emerging science on the importance of Glia in brain disease. Abelian Therapeutics was acquired in September 2020.
Prof. Bobby Gaspar wanted to solve a big puzzle.
But he only had a few pieces in hand. He and his co-founders had some of the most exciting-edge gene therapy medicines-and clinical data showing they worked-but that wasn’t enough.
To turn these academic developments into actual medicines, he needed to create a biotech company that could bring the right people together, build the necessary regulatory and manufacturing infrastructure and have the business acumen to aggregate multiple rare disease assets from several academic counterparties through complex license negotiations.
He needed serious leverage.
Other investors had met with him but passed up the opportunity. F-Prime saw the potential of his vision and stepped in as his co-founder in Orchard Therapeutics and lead investor. We provided the founding operational team with the biotech industry expertise and the financing they needed to secure several licenses with other academic institutions and create the operational infrastructure.
This enabled Bobby, now Orchard’s Chief Scientific Officer, to create a category-leading biotech company. Orchard Therapeutics went on to raise $300M in private financing, and it took only three years to go from incorporation to NASDAQ IPO.
“I couldn’t have created Orchard without F-Prime.”
Prof. Bobby Gaspar, Founding CSO