Print“Our latest initiative will enable us to show the potential impact of a truly meaningful investment that will bring hope to patients without ignoring the demand from investors for a return on their investment, says Muller.”
In a novel twist on venture philanthropy, three entrepreneurs, all diagnosed with ALS, are launching an investment fund with the goal of raising $139 million (€100 million) targeted at finding a cure for the disease while at the same time offering a return to investors.
Bernard Muller and Robbert Jan Stuit are behind a research initiative, called Project MinE, founded in June 2013 to sequence the genomes of as many as 15,000 ALS patients in the hope of identifying the genetic basis of the disease.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease after a famous New York Yankees baseball player, is a progressively degenerative neurological disease that impacts thousands of people each year and for which no cure presently exists. More than 200,000 people worldwide live with ALS. Average life expectancy is about three years.
Time is of the essence for Muller and Stuit who have teamed up with Garmt van Soest to create the fund to speed translation of academic research in the space into clinical candidates. The fund will allocate capital to create sound investment opportunities for investors and at the same time fill the ALS treatment pipeline with hope for those who need it most, the thousands of ALS patients who have no available treatment options.
“Our latest initiative will enable us to show the potential impact of a truly meaningful investment that will bring hope to patients without ignoring the demand from investors for a return on their investment and it will also bring cost savings for health insurers as well as real translational research and shared scientific success,” says Muller, who is based in the Netherlands.
The fund hopes to raise $139 million (€100 million) and is specifically aimed at so-called impact investors, those who invest in projects that have social or environmental goals besides making money.
To accelerate fundraising, the founders are holding an Investor Day on May 19 in Amsterdam that will include presentations by Jamie Heywood, founder of PatientsLikeMe, and Ronald Brus, founder of MyTomorrows.
May 02, 2014
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-als_patients_launch_139m_investment_fund.html
