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.
Orchard Therapeutics
- Leadership
-
Prof. Bobby Gaspar
- Location
- London, Boston, & Foster City, CA
- Sector
- Therapeutics
- Year Invested
- 2015
- Status
- Public (NASDAQ: ORTX)
Prof. Bobby Gaspar wanted to solve a big puzzle.
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