Amsterdam-based ALS Investment Fund closes third fund to finance innovation for neurodegenerative disease invests in biotech companies developing treatments for the progressive neurodegenerative disease ALS. The disease causes nerve cell degeneration, eventually leading to muscle wasting and paralysis. There is no cure for the disease, which affects roughly two to five of every 100,000 people, with no known genetic cause.
ALS Investment Fund has raised $70 million for its third fund to advance promising treatments for the disease.
“Our goal is to invest in companies where, in our view, the science has undergone significant de-risking while remaining positioned ahead of its largest value inflection point,” the team wrote. “We are confident that we are at a tipping point.”
ALS Investment Fund is led by neuroscientist and ALS researcher Melanie Leitner, neuroscience startup founder Felix von Coerper, and private equity veteran Craig Boyce.
“All three of us have been touched by ALS through colleagues, friends and Craig’s father, who was taken by the disease,” the team shared. (ImpactAlpha’s documentary, “Equity and ownership,” tracks Napoleon Wallace’s resilience in the face of ALS.)
“ALS is only considered to be a rare disease because patients pass away so quickly… It is actually not all that rare of a disease,” they wrote. “So, we started to believe in an investor-return potential with asymmetric upside.”
They point to increased awareness about the disease and development of drug therapies in the past decade, some of which could be relevant to other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
ALS portfolio
The investment manager has 10 portfolio companies, including four from its third fund. Cambridge, Mass.-based QurAlis and New York-based ProJenX are focused primarily on ALS treatment discovery.
San Diego-based Bloom Science’s research focuses on the gut microbiome and how it “modulates key processes in metabolism, the immune system, nervous system and brain.” It is studying obesity and metabolic syndromes, a rare form of severe epilepsy known as Dravet syndrome, ALS, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
VectorY in Amsterdam is researching “disease-modifying treatments” for ALS, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s.