Today I'm taking a step outside of Texas and looking at the world. Many large pharmaceutical and biotech firms maintain venture capital operations through which they invest in early-stage biomedical companies. I wanted to get a sense of what these biopharma corporate venture capital (CVC) funds are up to. Which companies have CVC funds? How active are they? What are their goals? What are they investing in? Background: general and sector-specific trends in venture capital In 2014 venture capital funding in the U.S. hit its highest annual mark since 2001, as investors participated in $47.3 billion across 3,617 deals . Within this trend Life Sciences was the second largest sector (behind only the Media and Entertainment sector) for 2014 in dollar terms with $8.6 billion invested in 789 deals, the highest level since 2007 . Corporate venture funding has followed similar trends: 2014 marked the strongest year for CVC activity since 2000 with $5.4 billion invested in U.S.-based co
Taking a look inside the Texas biomedical industry — by Isamu Hartman, PhD, MBA