Adjuvant Capital, a life sciences investment firm that focuses on promoting global health, has announced an oversubscribed US$300 million Global Health Technology Fund. This Fund is meant to accelerate medical innovations for historically and largely ignored public health issues.
The capital investment launched in 2019, will assist promising modern technologies for indications, which the venture capital industry has mostly relegated.
The managing partner at Adjuvant Capital, Glenn Rockman, said, “billions of people around the world live under perpetual challenges from diseases, including malaria, hookworm, tuberculosis, Shigella, and Lassa fever. Despite all these, the Wall Street and Silicon Valley pay little attention to these widespread challenges.”
Rockman further said as viruses such as Ebola, Zika, and SARS-CoV-2 have clearly demonstrated. The high-income countries are also vulnerable to pathogens. Our new Fund will finance cutting-edge research so we are better prepared for threats old and new alike, with the ultimate goal of saving or improving millions of lives by bringing urgently-needed drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and medical devices to market.”
The Capital firm has supported 14 organizations developing technologies for high-impact indications like melioidosis to the widespread emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each Adjuvant investment contains binding commitments to make successfully commercialized produces available and accessible to the grossly underserved people in low- and middle-income countries.
Adjuvant Capital has gathered a unique coalition of modern and catalytic investors. Many of these investors are also contributing scientifically and are market expertise.
The investors of the funds are Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Anthos Fund and Asset Management, CDC Group, Beacon Pointe Advisors, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, ELMA Investments, and the Ford Foundation.
Other contributors were the John D., International Finance Corporation and the Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation, Global Health Investment Corporation, Laerda Millon Lives Fund, Novartis, Merck, Sonanz and the Sorenson Impact Foundations etc.
“A wide array of private, public, and philanthropic partners have come together to help ensure the most promising health technologies and services are available to people most in need,” said Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He further said, “there is a crucial role for investment capital to play in stimulating innovation and making markets work for the poor. This will ensure everyone has the chance to live a healthy, productive life.”
The US-based investment, Adjuvant Capital, is interested in the most promising technologies and talent globally, with investments in Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, coupled with Indian and Western Europe.
Adjuvant’s Fund invested in Lagos-based 54gene, which uses the pan-African genetic data. It functions in driving discoveries of drug and vaccine development.
The Managing Partner (MP) at Adjuvant Capital, Jenny Yip, explained, “accelerating the widespread availability of emerging public health innovations is a smart business decision that has the potential to benefit millions of people, especially women and girls, in low-income countries.”
He went further and said, “we strongly uphold that our investment model represents an innovative way to benefit both our investors and society at large.”
“The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is proud to have been an early investor in Adjuvant’s debut fund. Our belief in its strategy of backing new, innovative and price appropriate solutions to neglected diseases – which tend to disproportionately impact people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) – is today more relevant than ever,” Nick O’Donohoe, CEO at CDC Group, said.
Nick continued and said, “the Fund’s strategy strongly aligns with our own belief in promoting health equity for the most economically disadvantaged, particularly children and women in LMICs. Adjuvant’s impressive management team have been able to build a mission-aligned portfolio at significant pace that is eminently scalable on both impact and return measures, which is the essence of impact investing.”
Presently, CDC Group has revealed that its funds in a US$300 million fund from the Adjuvant Capital are meant to accelerate the development of medical innovations for the historically ignored public health concerns.