The first biopharma venture fund to close in 2025 comes from industry veterans Joe Jimenez and Mark Fishman, two former Novartis leaders.
Jimenez exclusively told
Endpoints News
on Monday that Aditum Bio closed its third fund at $428 million. The firm had targeted $400 million for the fund, Endpoints reported in May. Aditum Bio broke cover in 2020 with a
$133 million fund
followed by a $250 million sophomore fund.
The new fund arrives in time for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, set to start next week. Industry insiders heading to San Francisco are hoping for positive indicators of increased dealmaking, startup funding and industry collaboration after a subpar M&A environment in 2024.
Aditum Bio constructs individual portfolio companies around experimental medicines on the verge of clinical entry or early-stage trials. So far, it’s built more than 10 companies, including
Celexor Bio
,
Versanis
(which was acquired by Eli Lilly in 2023), and Anteris, which
shuttered
last spring.
“We minimize expenses going into that company,” Jimenez
previously told Endpoints
about Aditum’s asset-centric portfolio model. “We don’t go out and ask another VC to participate. We will keep the ownership level very high for Aditum. We’ll put it into the clinical trial using our development group. And then, at the end of that period, if we generate positive data, then that gives us all kinds of flexibility.”
With its third fund, Jimenez said Aditum plans to form 10 companies. It’s so far created T cell engager startup
Oblenio Bio
and Coastline Bio, both of which are involved in the hot area of autoimmune disease drug development.
Aside from autoimmunity, the third fund is also expected to hone in on neuroscience and cardiometabolic diseases, according to Jimenez.
“We’re looking a lot at targeted psychiatry,” Jimenez told Endpoints in 2023. “We believe neuroscience is going to go through the same kind of patient stratification that oncology went through many years ago as the genetic basis of some of these diseases becomes better known. Also, autoimmune. Autoimmune is the new oncology in terms of pharma interest.”
Aditum now plans to open a second office. The Oakland, CA-based firm will set up shop in Cambridge, MA, sometime this year, Jimenez said.