Character Biosciences, Inc.

Sanofi is doubling down on its corporate venture arm as the French pharma boosts its coffers for biotech investments by an additional $625 million. The pharma’s corporate venture capital (CVC) unit now has $1.4 billion in assets under management, following Wednesday’s multiyear dedication and a prior multiyear commitment it announced in January 2023. A few of Sanofi Ventures’ bets have come to fruition in recent quarters, as biopharmas swooped in to acquire portfolio companies Aliada Therapeutics , Escient Pharmaceuticals and Inozyme . Each dollar that gets returned goes back into new investments as part of the evergreen structure of the firm, the venture team’s managing director Jason Hafler said in an interview. Since 2012, Sanofi has continued to bolster its use of the corporate venture wing, an investment approach employed by most of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies . A few drugmakers have ditched the CVC game, including GSK . Others, such as Biogen, are looking to take a CVC-like approach . CVCs have played a key role in the biotech investment landscape in recent years as venture funding has dried up for many drug development startups. Many limited partners have devoted their capital to mainstay life sciences venture firms, and those funds in turn have concentrated their bets on fewer, more expensive financing rounds. CVCs can step in and help provide capital where other VCs might not. “Our horizons really are in the development life cycle versus a fund cycle,” said Hafler, who’s been with the CVC since 2014. “So it’s one of the nice differentiators we have with a corporate lens.” Sanofi Ventures has been quite active. The firm has deployed more than $800 million across 70 companies in biotech and digital health since coming to life in 2012. About 80% is focused on therapeutics and the rest on digital health, Hafler said. The firm, which has sites in Cambridge, MA, and Paris, can invest in a startup starting in its seed funding days all the way to participating in those portfolio companies’ IPOs. Recent investments include Character Biosciences , Enveda and Odyssey Therapeutics . Hafler said the firm just closed its 11th deal of the year. Investments like ophthalmology-focused Character and retinal gene therapy developer SpliceBio can help Sanofi move into additional areas. “Sanofi doesn’t have a large footprint in [ophthalmology], but we think that’s an area that could be relevant down the road to building out efforts in that space,” Hafler said. “So equity is a great tool to stay close, support innovation, to be able to get products to the later stage and to the right de-risking, where a company like Sanofi could partner or acquire.” The venture team is part of the pharma’s increasing emphasis on external innovation. Sanofi has ramped up dealmaking in recent years as it’s refined its strategy to focus on areas like immunology, vaccines, rare diseases and neuroscience. Sanofi has bought Vigil Neuroscience , Vicebio and Blueprint Medicines this year, and acquired an asset from Dren Bio. The pharma company is also reportedly working on a $275 million fund with Cathay Capital to support Chinese biotech companies, according to an April report from DealStreetAsia . “The Cathay effort is a specific effort in China. We work closely with the team there and with our colleagues who are on the ground doing BD, strategy, etc.,” Hafler said. “It is not run by myself or the team, but our view is it’s one of the many tools.”

Dive Brief:Sanofi said Wednesday it would load its corporate venture arm with another $625 million in committed cash to support investments in young biotechnology and digital health companies.The fund, Sanofi Ventures, has already backed several drug startups so far this year, among them gene therapy maker SpliceBio, ophthalmology-focused Character Bioand brain drug developer Draig Therapeutics. It will continue investing across all stages of the private companys lifecycle, from seed rounds to the crossover fundings that typically precede new stock offerings, the firm said.Over the last past decade, corporate venture funds such as Sanofis have become a cornerstone of biopharma innovation, supporting new as well as growing biotechs while increasing odds of a successful outcome, according to a July report from Silicon Valley Bank. Since 2022, these funds have been involved with more than 70% of the venture-backed biotech companies to go public and more than 60% of those that have been acquired, the report said.Dive Insight:Though many biotech investment firms have recently raised new funds to support young drugmakers, theyre cautious in deploying that cash in a turbulent economic climate. That hesitance has given Sanofi an opportunity to lead investment rounds, a job thats historically gone to traditional venture firms, according to Jason Hafler, a managing director at Sanofi Ventures.Our view is, at this moment in time, this is what biotechs need, Hafler said. They need funds and corporates to step in and lead rounds or co-lead rounds.Doing so can give the pharma companies these corporate venture funds represent a close look at emerging science, as well as a potential future partner or acquisition target that could stock their pipelines. But SVBs report suggested that the growing presence of firms like Sanofi Ventures has lifted young biotechs, too. Corporate venture arms are jumping in earlier while still investing in companies close to the public markets, providing needed support at a time when funding is difficult to secure.Companies with those investors on board appear to raise larger rounds and command equal or better pre-money valuations than their counterparts,SVB wrote.Theyre also able to determine what we would need from a clinical or preclinical data package which could get Sanofi or other potential acquirers interested, Hafler said.That insight has benefited, in recent years, multiple biotechs Sanofi Venturesbacked. Among them were Icosavax, which was acquired by AstraZeneca in 2023;Aliada Therapeutics, which sold to AbbVie last October; and Escient Pharmaceuticals, which Incyte purchased the following month. In a statement, the firm said it had three investment exits last year with a combined acquistion total of $3.25 billion.Sanofis fund will remain focused on its core areas of immunology, rare diseases, neurology, and vaccines. But Hafler said it wouldnt rule out investing in areas that have received less backing, such as ophthalmology.The fund just closed its 11th deal so far this year, he said, with details regarding the latest investment coming soon.The new commitment will leave Sanofi Ventures with $1.4 billion in assets under management. '

Ollin Biosciences launched on Wednesday with $100 million in its coffers to advance a pair of China-sourced assets — one designed to take on an established leader in the eye disease space, while the second could be the first to address the underlying pathology in Graves' disease. ARCH Venture Partners, Mubadala Capital and Monograph Capital led the startup's initial financing. "With Ollin, we have assembled a true ophthalmology development engine by bringing together a world-class team with the capital and tools to acquire and advance next-generation product candidates,” said Paul Berns, ARCH's managing director and the board chair at Ollin.Better than Vabysmo?Licensed from Innovent Biologics, Ollin’s lead programme OLN324 is a VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody in development for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular oedema (DME).While the candidate goes after the same targets as Roche's Vabysmo (faricimab), Ollin believes OLN324 has "substantially higher anti-Ang2 potency," as well as a "smaller protein format," which together could make it best-in-class for disease control. Results from a Chinese dose escalation study in patients with DME showed that OLN324 has a favourable safety profile, and also demonstrated "promising vision and anatomic improvements," Ollin said. The biotech has already enrolled over 150 patients with AMD or DME in the Phase Ib JADE trial, which is a head-to-head study comparing OLN324 against Vabysmo. Because Ollin is testing its asset at higher molar doses than Roche's, it expects OLN324 to have greater target coverage and extended durability. Topline data are expected in the first quarter of 2026. Ollin has a ways to go, however, to unseat Vabysmo — which itself has been crowding out former eye disease leader, Regeneron's Eylea. Roche recorded about $2.6 billion in sales for Vabysmo for the first half of the year, compared with about $2.2 billion in combined sales between Eylea and a high-dose formulation (see – Spotlight On: Roche's fastest growing drugs and Vital Signs: Can Regeneron break its CRL streak?).Going after Graves'The biotech's second programme is a potentially first-in-class bispecific antibody targeting TSHR and IGF-1R. Ollin licensed exclusive, ex-China rights to OLN102 (formerly VBS-102) from Chinese firm VelaVigo in an April deal worth up to $440 million.The company is developing OLN102 for thyroid eye disease (TED), and it also thinks the candidate has the potential to address the underlying autoimmune thyroid dysfunction characteristic of Graves' disease. Because OLN102 precisely inhibits both TSHR and IGF-1R in affected tissues, it may have better safety and improved efficacy compared with existing treatments for TED, Ollin said. It plans to bring the candidate into the clinic next year. "We believe our first bispecific programmes present a tremendous opportunity to improve patient care with medicines that target more than one pathway, given the multi-factorial nature of many eye diseases," said CEO Jason Ehrlich. He previously served as senior group medical director, global head of clinical ophthalmology at Roche's Genentech unit. Fresh funds for CharacterAt a time when private US biotechs have struggled to raise VC funding, Ollin's megaround stands out as a positive sign — and it wasn't the only ophthalmology company to raise funds on Wednesday.Character Biosciences also brought its series B into megaround territory. The company had nabbed a $93-million series B in March, but a fresh extension on Wednesday, which saw participation from Sanofi Ventures, brought the round's total to more than $110 million. The biotech is developing precision medicines, informed by genetics, to treat dry AMD.