Excel Venture Management Launches $125 Million Debut Life Sciences Fund

Excel Venture Management Launches $125 Million Debut Life Sciences Fund

Boston, MA. July 7, 2009. Excel Venture Management announced today the launch of its first fund, Excel Medical Fund. The $125 million fund will be invested in early- to late-stage companies with transformative life science technologies that can address multiple markets.

Excel's partners have an extensive track record of investing in some of the world's premier healthcare and life science companies. By working closely with management, and leveraging their global network of resources as well as the team's operating, entrepreneurial, and financial experience, Excel is building a portfolio of companies that are leaders in their respective fields. Excel's investment focus centers on healthcare information technology and services, diagnostics, medical devices, and life sciences platforms with broad applicability to adjacent industries such as energy, chemicals, defense and agriculture.

The Excel Venture Management's team has over 100 collective years of experience in venture, healthcare, operations, and technology, and is supported by a broad network of advisors and opinion leaders. The investment team is led by Managing Directors Rick Blume; Steven Gullans, Ph.D.; Juan Enriquez; and Enrico Petrillo, M.D.; Venture Partner Donald Crothers, Ph.D.; and Vice Presidents Caleb Winder and Tricia Moriarty.

"The team assembled at Excel Venture Management contains the ideal mix of industry veterans, industry visionaries and investment professionals to identify and build tomorrow's transformative companies in healthcare and life sciences," commented Managing Partner Enrico Petrillo, M.D.

"Excel's portfolio will be balanced across the many interrelated sectors that are impacted by life science technologies," said Juan Enriquez, Managing Director. "The rapid adoption and expansion of these technologies into major industries such as energy, chemicals, defense and agriculture represents an enormous investment opportunity. We believe that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The life science economy has the potential to follow a similar path as the digital code of ones and zeros and will become a key economic driver in the 21st century."

Managing Director Rick Blume added, "We believe that our investment strategy greatly increases our chances of providing successful returns to our investors. We are applying our proven strategy across broad life science platforms to generate value across several markets, providing multiple exit scenarios for each investment. We are witnessing tremendous interest from non-traditional industries to incorporate life science technologies into their R&D programs. These companies represent a new source of partnering or acquisition exits for our investments."

"Our team has a track record of generating significant value and returns in the life science and healthcare sectors through multiple successful exits," commented Managing Director Steven Gullans, Ph.D. "Going forward, our experience in lowering costs and improving outcomes can be applied to many areas, including healthcare IT and services, where we can positively impact an area of great public and governmental focus."

Excel Venture Management has made three investments from this first fund: Aileron Therapeutics, which has a platform for developing ‘Stapled Peptides,' a new therapeutic modality for targeting intracellular protein-protein interactions that may generate a new class of drugs; BioTrove, whose ‘Universal Test Tube' technology addresses not only healthcare, but also the agricultural and environmental industries; and Synthetic Genomics, a biological software company engineering bacteria for industrial uses including renewable energy, environmental remediation and agriculture.

About Excel Venture Management Excel Venture Management builds companies that apply transformative life science technologies to solve problems in healthcare and beyond. The Excel investment portfolio is balanced across healthcare IT and services, diagnostics, and medical devices, plus life science platforms that address adjacent markets including energy, chemicals, defense and agriculture. The majority of the team's prior investments, which include some of the world's premier healthcare and life science companies, are thriving and over half have achieved successful exits generating billions in value. http://www.excelvm.com

Contact

Media: Kari Watson or Jennifer Conrad MacDougall Biomedical Communications [email protected] or [email protected] (781) 235-3060

Excel Venture Management: Lisa Goldberg [email protected] (617) 421-5208