Musician and biotech investor D.A. Wallach and drug developer Tim Wright have joined forces to create an early-stage life sciences and health care venture firm, Time BioVentures. Its first fund has closed, with $100 million in assets under management.
Backed by a bevy of biotech and health care investors, the fund finances innovations in medicine. Some of fund's limited partners include Chris Sacca, Ron Burkle and Wildcat Partner Holdings.
Sacca is the founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital and Lowercarbon Capital. Burkle is the co-founder and managing partner of the Yucaipa Companies. Wildcat Partner Holdings is affiliated with David Bonderman’s Wildcat Family Office.
The fund’s initial investments include Fremont-based Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface startup, and Kling Biotherapeutics, a clinical-stage drug discovery and development company in Amsterdam. Wallach declined to disclose the exact amount of the investments. He did tell LA Inno that Time BioVentures has been making multi-million-dollar investments via the fund.
Kling, which develops antibody-based therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases, recently gave its first patient a dose of its therapy in a study concerning advanced solid tumors. This therapy is based on an antibody produced by circulating B cells in the blood of a cancer survivor.
The global solid tumors market was valued at more than $209 billion in 2021 and is expected to exceed $901 billion by 2029.
About the Duo
Wright worked on multiple drugs while at Pfizer and Novartis, where he led global development. He has also served on the boards of several private and public biotech companies. And he’s an advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Wallach is a musician and former lead singer of the group Chester French. He was discovered by Pharrell Williams. He’s been an investor for more than a decade in startups including Spotify and SpaceX. His investments focus on health care innovators, including Beam Therapeutics and Devoted Health. He declined to disclose the amount of those investments.
Advisors to Time BioVentures include Nobel Prize winner Jim Allison, who won for his work in the field of cancer immunotherapy, and oncology specialist Padmanee Sharma.
