Millennium's Levin uses golden touch to fund start-up
Mark Levin earned a reputation for a colorful personality with an incredible knack for raising cash as co-founder of Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Two weeks ago, Takeda helped seal Levin's reputation in biotech with its $8.8 billion acquisition of Millennium. And Levin, who ran Millennium as CEO from 1993 to 2005, has sealed his reputation for raising cash with a $32 million Series A to get Constellation Pharmaceuticals up and running.
Levin is betting on the therapeutic power of epigenetics, the ability to switch genes on and off. So are Third Rock Ventures, The Column Group and Venrock, which co-led the round. Levin, a Third Rock partner, is acting CEO of Constellation. The company's list of founders includes some scientific heavyweights: Danny Reinberg, Ph.D, New York University School of Medicine; Yang Shi, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School and David Allis, Ph.D., The Rockefeller University.
Constellation isn't the only new epigenetics company to get started. The Boston Globe notes that MPM Capital of Boston and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have quietly launched EpiZyme, a very low-profile start-up that currently isn't doing much talking.
- check out the Constellation release
- read the report in the Boston Globe
Related Articles:
Takeda makes $8.8B bid for Millennium
Millennium chief scientist takes offbeat approach
Levin out, new CEO in at Millennium
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By Rod Raynovich | Posted 2:15pm | April 29, 2008
MLNM return on investment:$2.5B raised from inception netted $8.8B since 1996 less than 4X over twelve years. Stock went from about 5 to 25 or a 5X return over the same period.Unless you got out during the "biobubble"years of 1999-2000 your returns were only average and required unusual patience.
Among the worse investments in biotech check out HGSI and LGND.
By Anonymous | Posted 2:40pm | April 29, 2008
Constellation is hardly the first company founded on an epigenetic platform - Chroma Therapeutics in the UK was founded in 2001 or 2002 IIRC based on chromatin biology - the basis of epigenetic regulation.
By Anonymous | Posted 3:59pm | May 4, 2008
In addition to Chroma and EpiZyme there is Epigenix, CellCentric,Methylgene, TherEpi and of course Pharmion (now Celgene). Constellation isn't the first or largest.
If you follow the history of Millenium from a company based on the Human Genome Sequencing to Campath to Velcade. The companies scientific mission will quickly be replaced by hype and hope of a lucky hit...
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