Our team
@a16z
bio + health is grateful to have raised a fresh $1.5b fund IV to continue backing entrepreneurs across both life sciences + care delivery.
Read on to see our (publicly announced) portfolio to date + areas where we will continue investing!
Thrilled to be joining this amazing team! Look forward to working with founders who will change the future of healthcare and make it work better for patients 👊🏼
I'm thrilled to announce that Vineeta Agarwala will be joining
@a16z
as our newest General Partner!
@vintweeta
has had many different roles in the healthcare space: as a physician, as an operator at tech-driven healthcare companies, and as an investor.
Finally let my son “splurge” on something my immigrant parents could never bring themselves to allow me to do with money: deposited $0.51 into a machine to get back only $0.01, which has itself lost its value in the name of becoming a ‘souvenir’ 😅
Building in biotech / healthcare is HARD
We recognize this. We respect the journey. We expect failures. This is why we
@a16z
raised large bio venture $1.5b (+ growth $5b) funds: not to deploy capital lightly, but to join teams taking serious risks, over the very long run
#JPM22
“These founders are hungry, creative scientists who realized the impact of their work before others did, and now are leading the charge to bring their innovations to the world.”
Founder-led teams deliver outsized success in other sectors; we agree, they can in biotech too!
Spoke w/ 16yo about his (very rare, incurable) metastatic lung cancer diagnosis. Extraordinarily mature teenager. On chemo.
“Either I’ll live and be awesome, or I won’t be here to know what I missed, so either way it’ll be OK”
F*ck cancer. And stay awesome, kid
#oncologydiary
1/ Everyone's talking about video visits. But are they really the greatest gift of digital health? I think they’re a red herring. Just a new medium for the same old episodic care. REAL change will come as we transition to systems of "Always-On Triage"
1/ I’m excited to share that we are partnering with the
@BigHatBio
team
@MarkDePristo
@peytongreenside
, and leading their Series A financing! BigHat is building a platform for the future of biologic drug design, with tremendous potential for patient impact
“We believe in the technology-enabled future. There are no more worthwhile endeavors than our most brilliant minds taking great risks to improve the world by doing something larger than themselves.”
Grateful to share our latest — a $1.5B fund dedicated to bio + health!
1/ I’m thrilled to announce our fourth
@a16z
Bio Fund, bringing $1.5B of new capital to invest in the intersection of technology, life sciences & healthcare.
"This is major for me + my family. Two years w/out me being in the hospital? Wow. We just can't believe it. We're so grateful."
Loved hearing the real patient voice in this snippet — at 2+ yrs post
#CRISPR
therapy via
@VertexPharma
@CRISPRTX
for
#SCD
!
Hearing from many teams (incl my own) that being forced to remotely onboard new employees has actually made the process *better*.
Lots of things that [extroverted] ppl used to randomly learn in hallway convos are now codified, written, repeatable...and more widely accessible 👏🏼
The year is 2022. The city SF.
A woman (it me!) attending an event at a big hotel walks up to the front desk. Asks to use mothers / lactation room.
“What?”
“Try the ladies restroom”
“Sorry we only offer space to guests staying at our hotel” (this one made me laugh/cry hard)
🤬
1/8 “Equal means everybody gets the same. Equity means everybody gets what THEY need." - Bernard Tyson (fmr CEO/Chairman, Kaiser Permanente)
We're proud to back
@waymark_care
, a new platform to scale personalized, community-based care for Medicaid pts:
In honor of the first wave of RNA vaccine dosing this week, we brushed up on the
#centraldogma
RNA is awesome 👏🏼
Thx
@narayan_pri
for these amazing (and timely!) books, and thanks
@cara_florance
for creating this series!
@littleansh
might just be a budding baby biochemist
1/6 “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes.” -- Charlie Munger
Healthcare is no different! To change outcomes, the incentives + tech to enable/empower *doctors* must change.
And that’s why we're thrilled to lead Pearl Health’s Series A!
Happy
#Halloween
👻 to all the parents who rushed their kids out the door in costume to school this Fri morning :)
This may be the last year I can get
@littleansh
super excited about a costume I may or may not have slightly nudged him towards… 🩺🥼❤️🩹☺️
75 yo veteran w bad COPD + lung cancer walks into clinic today, no mask.
Me (😷 masked): Why aren’t you wearing a mask, sir?
Him: <suddenly angry>
“I’ve just about HAD IT w/ this trampling on my freedom. Have my own thoughts about this virus...”
This feels like a religious war
So brilliant yet so simple. Only flow oxygen when the patient is inhaling. Seems crazy that this isn’t how most oxygen delivery methods already work today!
[1/n] "Oxygen" - If you know anyone in India - it's one word you hear over & over. It's a critical life saving supply. In context of COVID surge in India, we are sharing open source design for "pulse dose" O2 conservation device - potential to save 50% O2. Not medical device yet.
Thank you Dr
@Bob_Wachter
for your extraordinary leadership over the past year — can’t even count the number of times
@paraga
and I referred to your tweets when assessing a situation, making choices for our family, or simply deciding how to feel at any particular moment in time
23/ …social media can be brutal, I’ve found Tweeting over the past year to be massively gratifying. And, while I hope my tweets have helped people make sense of an incredibly confusing and ever-changing landscape, I’ve also learned a ton in putting them together.
Digital pathology is evolving...
v1.0 = automate pathologist workflow to drive status quo efficiency
v2.0 (via
@valarlabs
) = EXTEND pathologist w ML-based insights humans can't even see. Use digitized features + past pt data to predict
#cancer
therapy response. Software as dx!
Sad but not surprising unfortunately...
Hey
#medtwitter
, how many doctors actually know exactly *how* to order
#COVID19
testing since it’s not a test that pops up in our EMR order-entry? Has your hospital shared a protocol?
I called 2 primary care doctors. One told me they don't know where to get testing, and that I should not to seek out testing. The other one told me to go to an urgent care or ER.
I called the Urgent Care, they also had no idea where tests are, but told me to call the hospital.
Is this thing on?
I have neck control, a double chin, and this cool
@twitter
onesie now, so figure it’s time to start tweeting! I’ll be sharing my candid thoughts via
@littleansh
#helloworld
I truly love
@23andMe
as much as the next pop health genetics enthusiast, and *deeply* respect the company’s ability to collect patient-reported clinical data at scale…
…but my reaction to reports on phenotypes like these is still 🤨
A very happy
#Thanksgiving
to all!
Thankful for so much: fam incl
@littleansh
@paraga
, friends who make time, health + the privilege to help others achieve it 🙏🏼, a truly dope team
@a16z
bio who push me to grow, and inspiring biotech + healthcare founders to jam w every day! 🧡
Asking hospitals and health systems to change the formats in which they ingest, use, or submit any critical data is usually bad news
To do so in the middle of a pandemic is unbelievable
It viscerally pains me that we occasionally ask the brilliant Stanford medical student on our team to spend his time collecting (faxed) medical records from outside hospitals. Hard to underestimate the human capital loss caused by the absence of EHR
#interoperability
It’s so sad to see, on painful national display, the White House’s total inability to interpret daily covid test results in the setting of recent exposure
After Hope Hicks tested positive, Kayleigh McEnany was pulled off President Trump’s trip to New Jersey and later informed she’d had direct contact with Hicks. Yet McEnany did not quarantine and was at the White House Friday and yesterday, citing multiple negative tests.
Furious (again) re US COVID pandemic response…
My grandfather suffered a stroke last wk. He’s in central Pennsylvania — transferred from Geisinger to a (great) local rehab.
His primary deficit: memory loss.
But there’s a ZERO visitation policy. His WIFE can’t even see him.
Have missed Kendall Sq so much! Spent the am w one of our amazing biotech portfolio cos - am always blown away by density of science (and scientists!) here.
@labcentral
spaces are so beautiful. And the restaurant Catalyst is totally teeming w brilliant bio entrepreneurs :-)👩🏽🔬👩🏻💻👨🏼🔬
Last week we described in
@JAMA_current
how we collected, de-identified, scrubbed, linked, and analyzed real-world
#EHR
clinical data LINKED to tumor sequencing data, all obtained in the course of ROUTINE
#cancer
care
#RWD
#RWE
(1/n)
1/n Honored to be jumping aboard the
@ThymeCares
team!
Congrats on announcing your latest financing and even more importantly - on beginning to serve
#cancer
patients and Thyme partners in a first-class way.
@a16z
is proud to be supporting your mission!
Heard some *insane* stories from several (badass!) women in health tech at a
#JPM2020
mixer tonight (thx
@NEA
/ Lily for hosting). Female leaders being told to “step aside, honey” in mtgs. Also stories of enormous success despite these odds. C’mon humans, let’s do better in 2020
World, meet
@inductive_bio
!
An ML-powered platform to learn from large datasets + accelerate small molecule optimization. Co-founded by
@Just_Joshing
+
@benbirnbaum
, who previously started and ran the ML team
@flatironhealth
(where we met). Excited to be working together again!
1/ Thrilled to have backed
@martabralic
+
@pomelocare
team thru Seed + now Series A financing!
Pomelo is building always-on, value-based maternity AND neonatal care for moms (aka badass "pomelos") and babies.
This one started w a personal story for me...
Physician in NYC told me her practice swung from 0% telemed to >80% @ peak covid, now back to <20%. Often, % telemed varies with weather (video ⬆️ if ☔️) but most days, pts prefer in-person.
*Choice* >> video all the time
The video visit is NOT the golden egg of
#digitalhealth
!
Congrats to the
@memorahealth
team on closing a latest $40m financing to fuel a next chapter of growth 🙌🏼
We
@a16z
led prior seed round; thrilled to continue backing
@mnvsevak
+ team as they bring smart automation at scale to our largest healthcare orgs!
“1) Moderna has already tested a higher dose booster in healthy adults”
“2) Moderna is studying two multi-valent booster candidates in the clinic, designed to anticipate mutations”
“3) Moderna will rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate”
77yo wife of a sick cancer patient called me today to explain that the difference between the words “hospice” and “palliative care” DO really matter to her.
The analogy she shared next was...surprising. Made me reflect on how much language matters to patients
#oncologydiary
Crazy how much statistical power may be lost in biomed research due to limited institutional sample sizes, and presumed inability to normalize analysis across datasets / batches
Human genetics field solved this well — from variant calls to assoc analysis, meta-analysis is norm
1/ "In the history of medicine, certain therapeutic classes have revolutionized the treatment of both prevalent and rare diseases, and RNA-based therapeutics is undoubtedly one of them.”
--
@gciaramella1
Excited for the launch of Orbital Tx today!
Our team
@a16z
is proud to join the
#ROMETx
Series B financing: harnessing power of the "repeatome" in cancer + autoimmune disease! Huge privilege to work w
@KapellerRosana
again, after watching her hustle to assemble the
#ROMETx
vision/team back in 2019!
Update:
#COVID19
testing is now available to order from within Epic now at
@StanfordMed
. Our hospital lab is using an in-house PCR assay, done internally. Turnaround time is 24hrs (upper bound).
Check out my recent piece called “Compete or Connect”, on the topic of durable business models in bio
And tell me what you think! Agree / disagree with the thesis? Notable exceptions that violate it?
In the complex world of bio, there are 4 major groups:
•life sciences
•providers
•payors
•patients
For
@vintweeta
, the most exciting businesses are those going full-stack and competing in a group or creating novel connections between two or more.
What does the word ‘likable’ even mean, really? Wish it wasn’t so many people’s first question about a political candidate, especially one with tons of public office experience.
Still reflecting on clinic visit this week w/ a (very cheerful) Chernobyl survivor who had AML, got BMT...then was also dx w breast cancer. Unfair. Age <45. Calls life “a blessing”, now works in healthcare herself
Nothing like oncology clinic to give us perspective on “problems”
Can I just say…this is some classic MD/PhD trendsetting right here 😂
“Bench to bedside…to worldwide”
is…so. good. Captures the last mile challenges in bio + health so well: distribution, scaling, access
We get to work w the best founders !
1/ A physician-scientist recently told me he was starting a company “to complete ‘the impact arc’—going from bench to bedside…to worldwide.”
We’re thrilled to announce
@a16z
’s Bio Fund 4: $1.5B to back founders building the future of bio + health.
“Like moving from a vacuum tube to a microchip, the technology promises to perform the same task as traditional vaccines, but exponentially faster, and for a fraction of the cost.”
#smallerfastercheaper
We are thrilled to welcome Greg Verdine to the
@a16zBioHealth
team as a Venture Partner!
Greg is a unique leader in both the academic + biotech worlds, a new drug modality pioneer, and a serial founder.
🎧 More below, and Greg's story in his own voice!
TONIGHT 5p PST / 8p EST
“Product Management in Bio: building for patient impact”
Special guests:
🔸 Clare Bernard: Sr Director Product Mgmt
@broadinstitute
🧬
🔸 Anjali Jameson: VP Product
@onemedical
🩺
+ product nerds
@a16z
bio like
@julesyoo
! 🛠
Loved this pod featuring my friend + healthcare venture colleague
@brobbs
!
Ben chats re evolution of health tech towards complex care (vs wellness); suggests both clinicians + biz operators practice "extreme modesty" when teaming up to build startups 🤝
Great show today!
@LifeSciVC
: During period that biotech VC funding increased by 5x, number of unique companies only grew by 2x
Why? Capital concentrating into finite number of mgmt teams
➡️ Growing size of the mgmt pool available (in variety of ways…) will be hugely valuable
1/ Where are the digital health solutions for our sickest patients? To impact their care, we must modernize our largest, most risk-bearing providers, payors, and life sci orgs.
@memorahealth
is on this mission!
@a16z
is thrilled to lead this financing:
New a16z Journal Club Podcast with
@vijaypande
,
@andy23tran
,
@heyjudka
in conversation w/
@LR_bio
This 1st bio episode covers: (1) using AI to find new antibiotics; (2) how knowing the structure of coronavirus proteins can aid therapeutic/vaccine design
Our a16z bio team outlines 16 big bio challenges.
Each is a field unto itself, none will be solved by a single company or research lab. Progress against each of these challenges is incredibly hard, but will lift all boats and will be worth it for patients
The field of biology is largely defined by its discoveries, and the problems they solve.
@vijaypande
&
@andy23tran
discuss 16 of bio's most exciting current open challenges —and possible solutions:
RIP Eli Broad. Extraordinary legacy not only in his own entrepreneurial successes, but via forward-thinking philanthropy (to the tune of ~$5B!) in K-12 public education, scientific and medical research and the arts.
Once had ICU pt (off/on dex drip so not totally with it) kick me out of room, yelling “Don’t need your kind of doctor, need a real American one”
That hurt, *especially* bc of his medical condition, since I knew that’s what he was really thinking even when he didn’t say it later.
Had my first patient refuse to see me because I’m Chinese. Insisted on a White team.
Seniors were amazing and stood up for me; the zero tolerance was made clear.
Still a really bitter pill to swallow...
#MedTwitter
#FY1
Must-read case report. Highlights danger of even *very* rare “off target” effects of therapies involving gene editing
In this case, off-target = wrong cell type edited ex vivo (leukemia vs T cell) while manufacturing CD19 CAR-T therapy
@NatureMedicine
This is so smart. ‘Vaccines for data’
Israel locked in supply of the Pfizer vaccine by promising (a) swift vaccine rollout, and (b) DATA! from Israel's centralized trove of medical records to study real-world efficacy (which is looking incredible btw)
"Biology’s complexity and dynamic nature has created a virtually unlimited need for genomic information."
Congrats to
@UltimaGenomics
on coming out of stealth today! Great news for the research community as well as the future of genomic dx in clinical medicine.
The $100 genome is here! Thrilled to unveil the company, highlight some of our collaborators and their data, and disclose our funding! Read the full press release:
My theories are a bit different, though 100% agree w strategic reasons you cite as secondary drivers
- Decrease cost of healthcare borne by *employer* (Amazon/Apple)
- A benefit/perk for employees - good for retention
- Increase employee productivity (no travel to appts)
My theories as to why both Amazon and Apple are doing their own primary care vs contracting out:
- an r&d lab
- an opportunity to learn about health care to get into spaces like pop health management
- a way to lower costs for employees
Or all of the above
ALL OUR PATIENTS ARE SO ALONE IN THE HOSPITAL, I HATE CANCER (AND COVID) SO MUCH
Love nurses though 💗
Can you imagine being newly dx w/ cancer, then ending up in a cold hospital room all by yourself
Systems to allow hospital care *outside the hospital* can’t come soon enough
For
#biotech
tweeps in my feed…
~50% (!!) of all
#sicklecell
pts in US are on
#Medicaid
As new therapies enter mkt, we must do more to ensure target pts (esp in underserved communities) are eligible / can actually access them
Check out our latest investment in
@waymark_care
!
"This is major for me + my family. Two years w/out me being in the hospital? Wow. We just can't believe it. We're so grateful."
Loved hearing the real patient voice in this snippet — at 2+ yrs post
#CRISPR
therapy via
@VertexPharma
@CRISPRTX
for
#SCD
!
Warm congratulations to
@gciaramella1
and the entire Orbital Tx team on the announcement of Series A financing today to advance a new wave of
#RNA
medicines.
More on our investment thesis here:
“If I could pull you out of the video screen and give you a big hug I would!”
— my 76yo lung cancer patient, struggling after his PCP retired, to find a new doc to prescribe meds he needs to survive…and finding solace (+med mgmt) in our
#cancer
#survivorship
clinic
❤️🩹❤️❤️🩹
Traveling for work solo, w/o baby
(👋🏼 Seoul, Korea 🇰🇷!)
For the first time in a year, I’ve got no baby bag, no pumping bag, no milk, one backpack total, wowza, I’m practically skipping through airports
Is this what travel used to be like or have I just built up parent energy
11,330 patients in an RCT across 30 countries
“Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir, and interferon had little or no effect on hospitalized pts w Covid-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay.”
In honor of elections in the US, we sat down for a special policy-themed episode of Bio Eats World with Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of
@nvca
.
We chatted about how healthcare policymaking can be bipartisan, and how startups and DC can collaborate:
1. Four years ago, when we launched our first bio fund, the idea that software would make an impact in drug discovery sounded like science fiction; the idea it could transform the patient experience in healthcare a fool’s errand.
Protein engineering goes mainstream with a NYT headline!
Great profile of some very cool work being done by scientists
@UWproteindesign
in David Baker’s lab, as well as alumni now in industry
@neoleukin
Amazing story of cell therapy from bench ➡️ first-in-human!
20 yrs research
@TheMeltonLab
@harvardstemcell
; $50M science funding prior to commercialization via Semma Tx /
@VertexPharma
And, paving the way for (more efficient) development of future iPSC-derived cell therapies 👏🏼
“These founders are hungry, creative scientists who realized the impact of their work before others did, and now are leading the charge to bring their innovations to the world.”
Founder-led teams deliver outsized success in other sectors; we agree, they can in biotech too!
The biotech startup ecosystem is dominated by a culture that requires every executive team to have done it before. Many companies are even created by VCs internally. But a new model is emerging -- the founder-led biotech. Why I think this is the future:
“They have some pretty fun automated processes that bother hospitals, clinics and labs at scale until they send over the patient’s health records to
@ciitizen
. This is my favorite part of the process because I, too, enjoy bothering people at scale.” 😂
I wrote about
@ciitizen
- the company building a personal health record and patient data marketplace.
-How their tech works
-How they get your records
-A bit on how FHIR/health information exchanges work
-What they're bets are as a company
Merry xmas from the bone marrow transplant service
@StanfordMed
! This is a xmas call day that I won’t forget.
It’s a privilege and joy to share in the hope that our HSCT and CAR-T patients receive a CURE from Santa this year, and are cancer-free in 2020! 🎅🏽 🙏🏼
Timmerman Traverse w the best team ever - folks who know how to do biotech together, trek together, and also take care of each other ❤️
We’re thrilled to have raised >$700k so far for
@LS_Cares
— thx to all who contributed! And to our fearless leaders
@ldtimmerman
@ArtKrieg
!
1/ What happens when the best of tech + biology come together to solve hard problems in medicine? Here are 16 of the biggest trends we see coming in the bio/healthcare world.
Thoughts? What did we miss? Let us know!
@vijaypande
@JorgeCondeBio
@julesyoo
What are two-sided network businesses in healthcare? How do they connect patients, providers, payors, & pharma? And when is this the right biz model for you?
@JayRughani
and I had a blast speaking w/ founders who successfully navigated this complex GTM strategy
Check it out! 👇
How can you better connect our healthcare system through software?
One increasingly promising way is to take a multi-sided network strategy.
@vintweeta
& I explore *how* with 5 iconic founders in this episode of GTM in digital health by the
@a16z
team:
Fun conversation! We covered so many of my fav topics: human genetics 🧬, the architecture of common disease 🤓, polygenic risk scores 🧮, proactive medicine 🩺, the transition from academia to startups. Thx
@genemodeller
(also a prior mentor & collaborator to me!) for joining us
Genetic testing is on the verge of a major revolution. On this episode of Bio Eats World, host
@LR_bio
talks to
@genemodeller
and
@vintweeta
about how this will shift not just how we understand our risk for disease, but how we practice healthcare: