By Raghav Mahobe
(Reuters) – Venture capital firm Westlake Village BioPartners on Monday launched a $450 million fund to back early-stage biotech companies, at a time when high interest rates have slowed funding activity.
While funding across sectors has fallen sharply, venture capital deals in pharma and biotech nearly halved to about $10 billion in the first six months this year in the U.S., data from research firm PitchBook showed.
“Fewer new funds (are) being raised and so we have the opportunity and the advantage of being able to start companies and support our current companies with a tremendous amount of capital,” Dr. Beth Seidenberg, founding managing director at Westlake Village, told Reuters.
As early-stage investors there is less competitive pressure in this environment, she said.
This is Westlake’s third fund and brings the total amount raised by the Los Angeles-based firm, which invests at seed and Series A stages, to $1.3 billion since it was founded in 2018.
Westlake has so far invested in more than 20 companies, including gene therapy developer Kate Therapeutics, cell therapy developer Arsenal Biosciences and biopharma firm Acelyrin, which recently debuted on the Nasdaq.
Immunology, inflammation and neuroscience are some of the areas that are seeing a lot of interest, said Westlake managing director Mira Chaurushiya.
“A large area of focus here at Westlake amongst the team has classically been in metabolic disease, you’ll continue to see us do work there,” Chaurushiya added.
(Reporting by Raghav Mahobe in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
