Category: Frazier News

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Frazier Life Sciences announced the addition of Bryan A. Irving, Ph.D. as a Senior Advisor. He has 30 years of experience as a T cell immunologist, including 23 years in the biotech industry focused on discovering and progressing immune drug candidates into the clinic for both autoimmune and oncology indications.

Dr. Irving most recently served as Chief Scientific Officer of Amunix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a company developing conditionally activated immunotherapies, until its acquisition by Sanofi for up to $1.225 billion in 2022. Prior to joining Amunix, he served as Chief Scientific Officer of Five Prime Therapeutics, where he led research and preclinical drug development, and as Vice President of Cancer Immunology at CytomX Therapeutics. Before joining CytomX, he spent 12 years at Genentech in the Departments of Immunology and Oncology/Cancer Immunology, where he was a key inventor and research leader for the PD-L1 immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq®).

Dr. Irving received his Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of California, San Francisco, and a B.A. in Physiology from the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral work, performed in the laboratory of Dr. Arthur Weiss, pioneered the single-chain chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technology. Dr. Irving conducted post-doctoral work at Harvard University and UCSF with fellowships from the Irvington Institute and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. His work has been published in top-tier journals including Cell, Science, Cancer Cell, Nature Immunology, and Immunity, and he is an inventor on patents that include the single-chain CARs and atezolizumab.

“I am thrilled to have Bryan join Frazier,” said Managing Partner Jamie Topper. “He is a highly experienced T cell immunologist, and we believe his insights will help us better understand and approach the increasingly complex strategies being pursued in immuno-oncology.”

About Frazier Life Sciences

Frazier Life Sciences invests globally in private and publicly-traded companies that discover, develop, and commercialize innovative biopharmaceuticals. Frazier Life Sciences funds comprise over $3.3 billion in capital raised, including venture funds focusing on company creation and private companies, and a public fund focused on small and mid-cap public companies. Since 2005, 62 Frazier Life Sciences portfolio companies, many of which were created or seeded by Frazier, have completed IPOs or M&As. The Frazier Life Sciences team consists of over 40 professionals with deep expertise in biopharmaceuticals, primarily located in Menlo Park, California (headquarters), San Diego, Seattle, Boston, New York, and London

For more information about Frazier Life Sciences, please visit www.frazierls.com.

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Frazier Life Sciences announced the addition of Jan Møller Mikkelsen as a Senior Advisor. He has over 30 years of experience as a biopharmaceutical executive. Mr. Mikkelsen founded Ascendis Pharma (NASDAQ: ASND) and currently serves as full-time President and Chief Executive Officer, as well as a board member. He previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of LifeCycle Pharma A/S (acquired by Asahi Kasei Pharma), as well as President of the Pharmaceutical Division of Maxygen, Inc. Prior to that, Mr. Mikkelsen co-founded ProFound Pharma A/S (acquired by Maxygen, Inc.), where he served as Co-Chief Executive Officer. He has also held various positions at Novo Nordisk A/S, including Vice President of Protein Discovery. In addition, Mr. Mikkelsen serves as Chairman of the board of directors for Hummingbird Bioscience.

Mr. Mikkelsen received a Cand. Scient. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Odense, Denmark, and pursued his post-doctoral research at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA. “I have known Jan for many years and am very excited to have him join Frazier,” said Managing Partner Albert Cha. “He is a highly experienced biopharmaceutical executive, and we look forward to working with him to identify and evaluate attractive life sciences investment opportunities.”

About Frazier Life Sciences
Frazier Life Sciences invests globally in private and publicly-traded companies that discover, develop, and commercialize innovative biopharmaceuticals. Frazier Life Sciences funds comprise over $3.3 billion in capital raised, including venture funds focusing on company creation and private companies, and a public fund focused on small and mid-cap public companies. Since 2005, 62 Frazier Life Sciences portfolio companies, many of which were created or seeded by Frazier, have completed IPOs or M&As. The Frazier Life Sciences team consists of over 40 professionals with deep expertise in biopharmaceuticals, primarily located in Menlo Park, California (headquarters), San Diego, Seattle, Boston, New York, and London.

For more information about Frazier Life Sciences, please visit www.frazierls.com.

Press Contacts
Frazier Life Sciences
Kate Schykerynec
Phone: 650.325.5156
Email: kate@frazierls.com

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Frazier Life Sciences announced the addition of Annette Doherty, Ph.D., OBE, FRSC, as a Senior Advisor. She has 35 years of international experience as a chemist and leader of pharmaceutical research and development divisions and has been directly involved in leading the development and launch of over 30 new medicines in a range of therapeutic areas, including respiratory, infectious diseases, oncology and immunology.

Most recently, Dr. Doherty was Senior Vice President, Product Development and Supply at GSK. Prior to GSK, she was Senior Vice President of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Pfizer Global Research and Development site in Connecticut. Dr. Doherty was formally Senior Vice President, Site and Research leader at the Pfizer Global Research and Development site in Sandwich, Kent, UK. She has lived and worked in the US, France and the UK, leading global teams of up to 2000 scientists.

Dr. Doherty has considerable experience serving on Boards of private, public, charity, and educational institutions, including the UK Medical Research Council, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, and charities, including LifeArc and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2013, she was honoured as a Distinguished Woman in Chemistry/Chemical Engineering by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. She was formerly an Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemistry Society (ACS) publication series called Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry for seven years and was elected chairman of the American Chemical Society, Division of Medicinal Chemistry.

Dr. Doherty received her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry and her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Imperial College, London, UK. She conducted postdoctoral research at Ohio State University under a NATO fellowship award. Dr. Doherty has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and has been a co-inventor on over 30 patents. In 2009, she was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of her services to the pharmaceutical sector.

In addition to her role at Frazier, Dr. Doherty is currently a Non-Executive Director at the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust. She has also recently been elected as the next President of the Royal Society of Chemistry. “We are thrilled to have someone of Annette’s caliber join our team,” said Managing Partner Patrick Heron. “She is a highly successful drug developer with a wealth of experience across multiple therapeutic areas and geographies. We look forward to working with her to continue to develop innovative therapeutics that meet unmet medical needs.”

About Frazier Life Sciences
Frazier Life Sciences invests globally in private and publicly-traded companies that discover, develop, and commercialize innovative biopharmaceuticals. Frazier Life Sciences funds comprise over $3.3 billion in capital raised, including venture funds focusing on company creation and private companies, and a public fund focused on small and mid-cap public companies. Since 2005, 62 Frazier Life Sciences portfolio companies, many of which were created or seeded by Frazier, have completed IPOs or M&As.

The Frazier Life Sciences team consists of over 40 professionals with deep expertise in biopharmaceuticals, primarily located in Menlo Park, California (headquarters), San Diego, Seattle, Boston, New York, and London.

For more information about Frazier Life Sciences, please visit www.frazierls.com.

Press Contacts
Frazier Life Sciences
Kate Schykerynec
Phone: 650.325.5156
Email: kate@frazierls.com

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Frazier Life Sciences announced the addition of Tao Fu as a Venture Partner. He has over 25 years of business development, general management, operations, strategy, and commercial leadership experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.

Mr. Fu most recently served as President & Chief Operating Officer and then Chief Strategy Officer for Zai Lab, a publicly-traded biotech company listed on both NASDAQ (ZLAB) and Hong Kong, where he held a broad set of responsibilities including strategy, operations, business development, CMC, quality, and other corporate functions.

Prior to Zai Lab, Mr. Fu was Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial and Business Officer of Portola Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PTLA), a publicly-traded biotech company specializing in cardiovascular disease and cancer. In this role, he led Portola’s commercial operations, marketing, sales, and business development.

Mr. Fu was previously Vice President, Head of M&A and Alliance Management at Bristol MyersSquibb (BMS), leading the company’s corporate development, alliance management and venture capital investing activities.

Prior to BMS, Mr. Fu worked at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for 11 years, holding a number of leadership positions with increasing responsibilities, most recently as Vice President, Head of M&A, responsible for J&J’s global M&A activities in the pharmaceutical sector.

Over his career, Mr. Fu oversaw and was the primary deal negotiator for over 50 high-impact business development transactions. Earlier in his career, he worked at Scios Inc., a biotech company in California, and McKinsey & Company.

Mr. Fu received an MS in biology from the University of Rochester, and an MBA in finance and marketing from Vanderbilt University. He did his undergraduate studies in biology at Tsinghua University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

“We are excited to have Tao join our team,” said Managing Partner Jamie Topper. “He is a highly experienced biopharmaceutical executive who will help us identify, evaluate, and transact investment opportunities for our company creation efforts.”

About Frazier Life Sciences
Frazier Life Sciences invests globally in private and publicly-traded companies that discover, develop, and commercialize innovative biopharmaceuticals. Frazier Life Sciences funds comprise over $3.3 billion in capital raised, including venture funds focusing on company creation and private companies, and a public fund focused on small and mid-cap public companies. Since 2005, 61 Frazier Life Sciences portfolio companies, many of which were created or seeded by Frazier, have completed IPOs or M&As. The Frazier Life Sciences team consists of over 40 professionals with deep expertise in biopharmaceuticals, primarily located in Menlo Park, California (headquarters), San Diego, Seattle, Boston, New York, and London.

For more information about Frazier Life Sciences, please visit www.frazierhealthcare.com/lifesciences.

Press Contacts
Frazier Life Sciences
Kate Schykerynec
Phone: 650.325.5156
Email: kate@frazierhealthcare.com

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Frazier Life Sciences announced today the closing of Frazier Life Sciences XI, L.P. (“FLS XI”), exceeding its target of $800 million and raising more than $987 million in capital commitments in an oversubscribed fundraise. FLS XI is Frazier Life Sciences’ fourth venture fund focused on biopharmaceuticals and represents a continuation of the team’s investment strategy of advancing innovative therapeutics through company creation, early-stage venture (Series A and Series B), and crossover and public investing.

FLS XI will be led by Managing Partners Patrick Heron and James Topper and General Partner Dan Estes, who have been with Frazier for 24, 20, and 12 years respectively. They lead an experienced team comprised of over 40 professionals who have a collective 700 years of experience in founding, operating, and investing in companies developing biopharmaceuticals. Company creation will continue to be a core strategy in FLS XI; since 2005, Frazier Life Sciences has created 27 companies, ranging from spinouts of clinical-stage assets from pharmaceutical companies to de novo discovery efforts against novel targets. Company creation examples include Phathom Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PHAT), Arcutis
Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ: ARQT), Lengo Therapeutics (acquired by Blueprint Medicines), and Mavupharma (acquired by AbbVie).

“We sincerely appreciate the continued support of our limited partners, many of whom have been value-added partners since our first dedicated Life Sciences fund in 2016,” said Managing Partner Patrick Heron. “We are also thrilled to welcome some of our public fund investors to FLS XI, as well as a handful of new, high-quality institutional investors.”

FLS XI is the successor fund to FLS X, a $617 million venture fund raised in 2020. Frazier Life Sciences also raised an $830 million public fund (Frazier Life Sciences Public Fund L.P, “FLSPF”) in 2021, which is an evergreen vehicle to invest in public companies and late-stage private companies developing novel biopharmaceuticals. Managing Partner Albert Cha and General Partner Jamie Brush are the co-Portfolio Managers for FLSPF.

”Between FLS XI and FLSPF, we have over $1.8 billion of active funds to support biopharmaceutical companies at all stages of growth, from company formation through public offerings,” said Managing Partner Jamie Topper. “We are excited to back exceptional entrepreneurs – many of whom we have backed before – to discover and develop therapeutics for patients, leveraging the amazing advances in biology and medicine that have accelerated in recent years.”

About Frazier Life Sciences
Frazier Life Sciences invests globally in private and publicly-traded companies that discover, develop, and commercialize innovative biopharmaceuticals. Frazier Life Sciences funds comprise over $3.1 billion in capital raised (as of March 2022), including venture funds focusing on company creation and private companies, and a public fund focused on small and mid-cap public companies. Since 2005, 61 Frazier Life Sciences portfolio companies, many of which were created or seeded by Frazier, have completed IPOs or M&As. The Frazier Life Sciences team consists of over 40 professionals with deep expertise in biopharmaceuticals, primarily located in Menlo Park, California (headquarters), San Diego, Seattle, Boston, New York, and London.

For more information about Frazier Life Sciences, please visit www.frazierhealthcare.com/lifesciences.

Press Contacts
Cogenta Communications for Frazier Healthcare Partners
Theresa Maloney
Phone: 415.225.5261
Email: theresa@cogentacom.com

Frazier Life Sciences
Kate Schykerynec
Phone: 650.339.9602
Email: kate@frazierhealthcare.com