Investing for Healthcare Impact

BUILDING

Building and seeding technologies and companies from the infancy stage to translate science into commercial reality.

INVESTING

Investing in world-class molecular medicine companies at an early stage with a clear pathway to an exit.

Founding

Identifying and combining transformative biotechnologies, brilliant scientific teams and intrepid executives to form best-in-class biotechnology companies.

At Linden Lake Venture Capital, we believe we can improve the future of humanity through the advancement of biotechnology. We seek to build and invest in biotechnology companies with the intention of generating significant societal benefits alongside above average financial returns.

 We have firsthand experience with the challenges and turmoil associated with genetic disorders. These experiences have led to a passion fueled by the real possibility of creating treatments and cures for a variety of diseases and conditions, which remain largely untreatable by modern medicine. By doing so, we can greatly improve the lives of millions in need.

Genetic disorders represent a particularly vexing problem. Individual genetic disorders are rare, but, in the aggregate, they are very common. One in ten in the U.S. suffer from rare genetic diseases as well as least 350 million people, mostly children, worldwide. That represents twice the number of people suffering from cancer.

A 1999 annual review of pediatric mortality data showed that 23% of infant deaths are due to genetically determined disorders. A 2004 study found that an underlying disorder with a significant genetic component was found in 71% of children admitted to a major hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. Indeed, the vast majority (96%) of underlying chronic disorders in children in this study were either clearly genetic or had a genetic susceptibility. The 34% of admissions with clearly genetic underlying disorders accounted for 50% of the total hospital charges. The mean hospital length of stay was 40% longer for individuals with an underlying disease with a genetic basis than for those with no underlying disease. Thus, not only are genetic disorders common, they have an enormous cost to individuals – particularly children – and to already stretched healthcare systems.

As of 2017, FDA approved treatments have been obtained for only about 5%, or about 400 rare diseases. However, a combination of technological advances pioneered by scientists, biotechnology entrepreneurs, large pharmaceutical companies, and key insights from the Human Genome Project now allows us to identify the genetic causes of many of these disorders. The cost of sequencing a human genome has plummeted from >$1B in 2003 to less than $1,000 today. As a result, we now know the genetic mechanism underlying some 50% of the estimated 7,000 rare diseases. New sequencing and data analysis techniques are estimated to likely to uncover the mechanism underlying many of the remaining diseases by 2020.

The drug development process is notoriously expensive, lengthy, and risky. However, most rare genetic diseases have discrete and well understood biochemical mechanisms of action and thus relatively uniform pathologies. Therefore, as opposed to traditional drug development for common polygenetic diseases, when developing targeted molecular medicines, one is no longer looking for a needle in a haystack but perhaps a needle in only a basket of straw. Moreover, the therapeutic modalities developed to address specific genetic lesions often have broader applicability to more common diseases. Specifically, as general genetic/cell engineering strategies (e.g., gene editing, gene knock in/down, nucleic acid delivery, stem cell technologies) are optimized in the context of a rare genetic disease, such approaches are equally applicable in a plug-n-play manner for developing genetic/cellular interventions in a more common disease context. Additionally, a drug approved to treat patients with abnormal lipids caused by very rare genetic disorders like Familial hypercholesterolemia, may also be prescribed to millions of people with abnormal lipids such as elevated cholesterol. Further, drugs presumed to be effective for a tiny population with an inflammatory disorder like IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) may be prescribed to millions with other inflammatory disorders such as arthritis or cardiovascular disease).

Therefore, by building and investing in companies creating the next generation of molecular medicines, we aim to facilitate development of new treatments for millions of patients that currently have no hope of treatment – and push the current limits of drug discovery in more common disease contexts. The result will be: 1) decreased human suffering; 2) a substantial reduction of the burden on an already cash-strapped healthcare system; and 3) the translation of hundreds of billions of dollars invested in academic science into enormous and measurable gains in human quality of life.

We see this as the ultimate application of “Doing well, by doing good.”