December 17, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Google’s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, announced it is fine-tuning its focus for 2015 to allow for greater investment in life sciences and healthcare, the closely watch VC shop said this week.
In 2013 Google Ventures spent about 9 percent of its budget on health and life sciences, which it markedly increased to 36 percent in 2014.
“Healthcare is becoming part of information technology,” said Google Ventures managing partner Bill Maris in a statement. “The acceleration we saw in computers from 1960 until now is an acceleration we’re going to see in the life sciences, and that’s why it’s a huge opportunity.”
In Google Venture’s annual report, it also announced 16 exits, including iPierian, which was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb . iPierian focuses on the discovery and development of new treatments for Tauopathies, a class of degenerative diseases linked with the aggregation of Tau protein in the human brain. iPierian’s lead asset, IPN007, is a preclinical monoclonal antibody that shows promise for treating progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and other Tauopathies. Other major Tauopathies include Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Other major life sciences investments by Google Investments include Flatiron Health and One Medical. Google Ventures invested $130 million in Flatiron Health, which gathers and analyzes oncology data. “One in five patients in the U.S. are part of the Flatiron network and they don’t even know it,” said Maris in a statement.
One Medical is a little harder to get a handle on. Its focus is rebuilding the physician-patient relationship and improving the average doctor’s office visit by reinventing the healthcare system. It currently employs about 90 physicians in the San Francisco area, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago and New York. It accepts all insurance programs on top of an annual fee of $150 to $200. Included are same-day appointments and customized electronic medical records.
Overall Google Ventures’ reported for 2014 a total of 16 exists, more than $1.6 billion under management, a portfolio of 282 companies, and a new $125 million fund that focuses solely on European investments. Although the company is reluctant to acknowledge specific investments in the future, Maris does indicate that healthcare and life sciences is going to be of particular emphasis.
One reason for that is simply what technology has made possible. “I’ve always had a keen interest in the life sciences and I feel like there’s a real opportunity,” said Maris in a statement. “In 2000, even if you had a billion dollars, you couldn’t sequence a single genome.” Now it’s generally accepted that you can sequence a genome for about $1000.
