Column Group nears goal line for $250M biotech venture fund

Over the years the Column Group out of San Francisco has been a busy venture player in the biotech world. And the VC plans to stay busy. In a recent filing at the FDA, the venture group revealed that it has raised close to $176 million out of a planned $250 million fund.

The Column Group has backed a lengthy lineup of biotechs, ranging from Igenica (cancer-fighting antibodies) to Immune Design (immunotherapies) to PTC (Duchenne muscular dystrophy) and NGM. And that's over the past year or so. The group has been relatively agnostic about both diseases and who it likes to gamble alongside.

What the Column Group does like are biotechs promising to do something on the cutting edge of new drug development work. That approach spurred a gamble on Aragon, which was developing a high-profile prostate cancer therapy before J&J ($JNJ) bought it in a $1 billion deal. The venture group followed up with an investment in the successor company that came out of that deal.

The company's website notes that each of its funds will back 10 to 12 new developers with anywhere from $15 million to $30 million each.

- here's the SEC form