Ebb & Flow

Novartishas launched a new venture fund, the $200 million Novartis Option Fund, which will give the pharmaceutical company a first option to license a very early stage program at portfolio companies.

"As I started doing collaborations, I noticed that there had been a sea change in the way that venture investors were willing to participate in risk," Jeremy Levin, global head of strategic alliances for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, told Ebb & Flow. "An increasing number of VCs were focused on late-stage compounds or late-stage assets because the public markets were valuing them far more. New novel compounds were not being discovered."...