Martin is Principal based in the Cambridge office. Martin’s primary area of interest is in biotechnology investment and company creation efforts in a range of therapeutic areas including oncology, cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases, and rare disease. Martin joined F-Prime’s London office in 2019, where he has worked on several biotechnology company creation efforts and investments in Europe, including ARTBIO, CHARM Therapeutics and Tenpoint Therapeutics.
Prior to joining F-Prime, he was a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he researched molecular mechanisms of DNA replication. Martin completed his PhD at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, prior to its incorporation into the Francis Crick Institute, investigating DNA repair by homologous recombination. His research has been published in several original articles in journals such as Cell, Nature and Molecular Cell. Martin also holds BA and MSci degrees in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge.
Carlos Bustamante joined F-Prime in January 2019 as a Venture Partner based in the San Francisco office, and is focused on the application of data science and genomics technology to problems in medicine, agriculture, and biology. He is currently on leave from Stanford University where he is a Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Genetics, and (by courtesy) Biology, was founding Director of the Stanford Center for Computational, Evolutionary, and Human Genomics and is Inaugural Chair of the Department of Biomedical Data Science.
Carlos has a passion for building new academic units, non-profits, and companies to solve pressing scientific challenges. He is currently a Director at EdenRoc Sciences, LLC and Etalon DX, founder of Arc Bio, LLC and CDB Consulting LTD., and has served as an SAB member for more than a dozen companies.
Carlos received his PhD in Biology and MS in Statistics from Harvard University.
Nascent biotech company harnessing emerging science on the importance of Glia in brain disease. Abelian Therapeutics was acquired in September 2020.
But he only had a few pieces in hand. He and his co-founders had some of the most exciting-edge gene therapy medicines-and clinical data showing they worked-but that wasn’t enough.
To turn these academic developments into actual medicines, he needed to create a biotech company that could bring the right people together, build the necessary regulatory and manufacturing infrastructure and have the business acumen to aggregate multiple rare disease assets from several academic counterparties through complex license negotiations.
He needed serious leverage.
Other investors had met with him but passed up the opportunity. F-Prime saw the potential of his vision and stepped in as his co-founder in Orchard Therapeutics and lead investor. We provided the founding operational team with the biotech industry expertise and the financing they needed to secure several licenses with other academic institutions and create the operational infrastructure.
This enabled Bobby, now Orchard’s Chief Scientific Officer, to create a category-leading biotech company. Orchard Therapeutics went on to raise $300M in private financing, and it took only three years to go from incorporation to NASDAQ IPO.
“I couldn’t have created Orchard without F-Prime.”
Prof. Bobby Gaspar, Founding CSO
When he approached us, he was looking for an investor who would understand rare diseases the way he did. His vision was to build a mission-driven company to treat rare and ultra-rare genetic diseases—all the way from concept to globally-approved drugs.
The mutual trust between us was strong from the start. Emil demonstrated great leadership recruiting the team and hunting for drugs. Together we had to be opportunistic, and willing to go off-script and embrace a vision larger than “VC-101”-focused company building. We had to have the ability to support product acquisition, collaborations, and the additional investment that effort implied. Most small companies don’t have four clinical programs just three years after being founded. Ultragenyx did.
And in 2017—just six years in—Ultragenyx launched Mepsevii, a globally-approved therapy for Sly’s disease, an extremely severe and rare genetic disease that had remained untreated since it was first identified in 1972. 2018 saw the global approval of Crysvita for the rare bone disease X-linked hypophosphatemia.
It was a privilege for us to support Emil right from the beginning of the Ultragenyx story.
“F-Prime was a great partner, they understood the vision we had at Ultragenyx, and helped us make it a reality.”
—Emil Kakkis, CEO
Sana Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ: SANA) is focused on creating and delivering engineered cells as medicine for patients. We are a team of scientists, clinicians and biotechnology veterans focused on creating an enduring company that makes meaningful medicines and changes how we approach treating disease.
Genomics plc’s vision is to use genomic insights to transform the drug discovery industry by getting better drugs developed more quickly and targeted at the right group of patients.
Brian joined F-Prime in 2018 and focuses primarily on investments in the biopharmaceutical and medical technology sectors. Prior to joining F-Prime, Brian was an engagement manager at McKinsey and Company, where he advised pharmaceutical and medical technology companies on business development, R&D, and strategy topics.
Brian holds a PhD in immunology from Yale University and received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame.
NodThera is a biotech engaged in innate immune/inflammasome research. Our leading project is focused on developing inhibitors of the NLRP3 inflammasome for the treatment of inflammatory and neuroinflammatory diseases.
Modis Therapeutics, Inc. was formed in 2016 through a collaboration with academic experts in mitochondrial biology. The company’s lead program (MT1621) is in clinical development for thymidine kinase 2 deficiency (TK2d), an inherited mitochondrial disease. Modis Therapeutics is headquartered in Oakland CA, with offices in New York City. Modis was acquired by Zogenix.