Enable Injections, the region’s best-funded startup, has expanded its board of directors as the company looks to strengthen its position in the medical device market. The additions include a leader with experience from Sanofi and Eli Lilly and two executives from billion-dollar investment firms Versant Ventures and Magnetar Capital.
Evendale-headquartered Enable, which is developing and manufacturing a device called the enFuse, appointed Jim Collins, Beckie Robertson and Alec White to the board, effective May 31.
The additions increased the size of the group from six to nine members. The new directors bring operating, investing and delivery systems experience to the company, president and CEO Mike Hooven said.
Enable is developing and manufacturing an investigational wearable drug delivery system called enFuse, a palm-sized circular disk that can deliver a drug more quickly than traditional IV administration. The device is designed to deliver large volumes of medication for a wide range of therapies and diseases. The tech is said to provide patients and providers a safe, convenient and more cost-effective form of treatment.
“We look forward to benefiting from the new directors' guidance as we continue to execute on our strategy,” Hooven said in a release. "Their collective experience reflects a diversity of perspectives, skills and backgrounds, which we believe is key.”
Collins has over two decades of expertise as a global biopharma executive, most recently at Sanofi and Eli Lilly, in device research and development, design, packaging and delivery. He has developed and launched multiple innovative drug delivery technologies, included the market-leading insulin KwikPen platform, the Trulicity Pen platform, the Talz Pen platform, the Savvio Pen, the Forteo Pen, and a number of other first-to-market delivery systems.
Robertson is principal of Longridge Business Advisors and co-founder of Versant Ventures, a health care venture capital firm with $3.2 billion under management. Robertson, who specializes in early-stage medical devices and diagnostics, has more than 30 years of executive experience in the medical device industry. Robertson's career encompasses venture capital and operating experience in medical products as an engineer, entrepreneur, corporate executive and investor.
White is senior analyst at Magnetar Capital, an alternative investment firm with more than $13 billion under management. White covers pharmaceutical and therapeutic investments and has over a decade of buy side investment experience.
Magnetar Capital led Enable’s most recent $215 million Series C, the region’s largest venture capital raise to date.
The round catapulted the company to the top of the region’s best-funded startup list. In March, Enable was also named as part of a new $300 million-plus collaboration between drugmaker Sanofi and global investment group Blackstone Life Science.
Sanofi will be using the EnFuse, Enable’s body-worn, investigational device, to deliver Sanofi drug’s Sarclisa for patients with multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the plasma cells, in clinical trials.
