James N. Topper, M.D., Ph.D.

Jamie co-leads Frazier’s Life Sciences team and has over 25 years of experience working with entrepreneurs to found and build successful therapeutics-focused companies.

Jamie is a Managing Partner of the Frazier Life Sciences team. He joined Frazier in 2003 and opened Frazier’s first California office in the same year, along with Patrick Heron. Throughout his 21 years as a General Partner and then a Managing Partner, Jamie has led or co-led investments across over 60 companies.

Jamie has led many of Frazier’s life sciences investments, including Acerta Pharma BV (sold to AstraZeneca), Calistoga Pharmaceuticals (co-founder, sold to Gilead Sciences), Mavupharma (sold to AbbVie), Rempex (sold to The Medicines Company), Incline (co-founder, sold to The Medicines Company), Alnara (sold to Lilly), Portola (co-founder, NASDAQ: PTLA), CoTherix(sold to Actelion), Threshold (NASDAQ: THLD) and Alpine Immune Sciences (sold to Vertex). He currently represents Frazier on the boards of Architect Therapeutics, Attovia, Diagonal Therapeutics, Enlaza Therapeutics, NewAmsterdam Pharma (NASDAQ: NAMS) and Phathom Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: PHAT). Jamie previously served on the boards of Amunix Pharmaceuticals (sold to Sanofi) and AnaptysBio (NASDAQ: ANAB).

Prior to joining Frazier, Jamie was the head of cardiovascular R&D at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and ran Millennium San Francisco (formerly COR Therapeutics). Before the merger of COR and Millennium, he served as the Vice President of Biology at COR and was responsible for all research activities. He served on the medical school faculties at Stanford and Harvard Medical School prior to joining COR.

Jamie received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford and holds a B.S. from the University of Michigan. He did his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has authored over 50 publications and was the recipient of a Howard Hughes Scholars Award while on the faculty at Stanford.

In 2011 and 2016 Jamie was named to the Midas List of leading venture capitalists, and in 2013 was recognized by Forbes as one of the top 10 healthcare investors.