Former Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez and research leader Mark Fishman are fundraising again for their life sciences firm Aditum Bio, which in-licenses translational-stage drugs and sets up individual companies around them.
Aditum is raising its third fund with a target of $400 million, according to a Friday SEC filing. If the Oakland, CA-based firm secures that full target amount, it would be $150 million larger than its sophomore fund and about three times the size of its inaugural fund.
Jimenez hinted in an interview with Endpoints News last fall that Aditum would likely look at raising a bigger, third fund in 2024.
The move comes as established life sciences firms like Flagship, ARCH and Cormorant raise veteran funds. Others have recently unveiled their new funds, like Canadian firm Amplitude Ventures, Sands Capital and ORI Capital.
The firm has created at least 10 companies so far, including Celexor Bio, which is working on autoimmune and inflammatory diseases with work licensed from San Diego-based Inmagene Biopharmaceuticals. One of Aditum’s portfolio companies, Versanis Bio, was bought by Eli Lilly for up to $1.9 billion last summer. Meanwhile, it shuttered renal disease portfolio company Anteris after looking at preclinical results earlier this year.
“Aditum came out of an idea that we had when I was at Novartis,” Jimenez told Endpoints last October. “When you look at the drug discovery and development and commercialization flow, drugs were getting stuck, and it was right where research interfaced with development.”
The firm scours through about 500 to 600 drugs a year and then offers term sheets to “maybe 20,” Jimenez previously said. They’ll bring about two or three of those to fruition, he added.
Aditum in-licenses drugs, forms a company around them and then works with its centralized development group to take them through clinical testing. “At the end of that period, if we generate positive data, then that gives us all kinds of flexibility,” Jimenez previously said.
The firm is interested in neuroscience, autoimmune and substance use disorder, among other areas.
“I was very clear with all of my investors that out of the 10 companies, I expect only three of them to provide good data, and seven of them will shut down,” Jimenez said in the October interview. “Many times in pharma, if you’re in Phase 2 and you don’t get a positive readout, there’s a project team that’s willing to convince management that all they have to do is change the patient population, and they’re going to have success. That’s not what we’re about.”