Start-Up analyzes fundraising and alliances among start-ups in the biopharmaceutical, medical device and in vitro diagnostics segments from October through December 2007. Data is derived from Windhover’s Strategic Transactions Database.

Pacific Horizon is an active venture investor, often owning large majority stakes in its portfolio companies. The venture capitalist has taken two different strategies with its majority-owned virology investments, Illumigen and Koronis, eschewing and embracing risk, respectively. Each firm, however, represents a potential game-changing opportunity, and illustrates PHV's back-to-basics venture philosophy: making novel-mechanism bets that are perceived as having both high scientific risks and long-term potential paybacks

While a postdoc at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-1980s, Albert Wong, MD, made a fortuitous discovery that would form the basis of a start-up, Alteris Therapeutics Inc. (formerly Spliceomix Inc.), he eventually co-founded almost fifteen years later. His research-studying genes amplified in brain tumors-led him to investigate one of the better-known targets at the time: the EGF receptor (EGFR).

In Vivo briefly summarizes the technologies of these recently founded companies: Afmedica Inc., BARRx Inc., Bioline Therapeutics, Deciphera Pharmaceuticals Inc., Resonant Medical Inc. and Spliceomix Inc.