Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2018: Roger Kitterman

It has been two years since Roger Kitterman, vice-president of venture and managing partner of US-based healthcare provider’s Partners’ Innovation Funds (PIF), was featured in GCV’s 2016 Rising Stars edition.

Christopher Coburn, chief innovation officer at Partners and winner of GCV’s 2017 Powerlist, on Kitterman’s renewed nomination said: “Roger’s career has been about shaping new and unproven areas of venture investing and delivering large scale returns.

“At every turn, he brings a commitment to all the elements of the deal big and small, an understanding of the individuals involved and their aspirations, and finally the content of the deal. In our case, the technologies and systems that are reshaping contemporary medicine.”

PIF targets early-stage healthcare companies and aims to help technologies emerging from the Partners Healtcare research community and accelerate their development.

One significant development has been the growth of PIF’s second fund from an initial $35m commitment to $171m. This was a “key milestone on the path to our goal of growing the fund to $350m of assets under management,” Coburn said.

Announced in early November, Partners Innovation Fund II’s close partly consisted of a $105m commitment by Partners institutions, including $50m from both Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

The remaining $66m, was raised from a dozen external investors, including pharmaceutical companies Astellas Pharma, Eli Lilly, ShangPharma Corporation and Simcere Pharmaceutical Group, as well as Fosun Pharmaceutical, which contributed $15m.

With this latest fundraise, PIF is now “one of the largest and most successful academic venture funds in the US,” according to Coburn.

Kitterman added: “While the fund now has a larger amount of money to invest, the strategy remains the same.

“If you think about healthcare, a $35m fund is a pretty small fund, so the way we did business up until now was mostly through heavily-syndicated deals. Having a larger investment capacity will now enable us to take a broader view, and to work not just with VC funds but also with other CVCs, even at seed stage.

“It really allows us to broaden our skills, to deploy our capital in ways that are new and different, and to generally do things a little more creatively in the early stages. It is a very exciting place to be in.”

A Harvard graduate, Kitterman was recruited as one of PIF’ founding partners in 2007. Over the past 10 years, he has led some of the fund’s flagship investments, including Adheron Therapeutics, which was acquired by Roche for up to $580m, Daktari Diagnostics, Provasculon, RaNA Therapeutics (now Translate) and immune-oncology startup CoStim Pharmaceuticals, which Novartis acquired in 2014 and deemed by Kitterman as Partners’ “most successful investment to date”.

He added: “One of our strongest interests is the development of new treatments for patients, and watching all these continue to progress through clinical trials and get to patients is a great satisfaction – it is what we are working for.”

Since October 2016, the managing partner has also become vice-president of venture, and leads both the innovation fund and licensing teams.

As part of his role within Partners, he currently represents the fund at the boards of portfolio companies Provasculon, Spero Therapeutics, Health Catalyst, Tilos Therapeutics and Magenta Therapeutics, which was an investment completed in 2017.

Magenta, which focuses on improving stem cell transplant for patients with immune and blood-based diseases, was launched in 2016 thanks to a $48.5m series A round led by Third Rock and Atlas Ventures and including Partners. Last year, it received a new $50m in commitments through a B round led by Google’s corporate venturing unit GV, and reuniting all its founding investors.

Last year, Partners also took part in a $23m series-A round for ultra-long-lasting oral drug developer Lyndra led by Polaris Partners. It also re-committed capital into clinical-stage biopharmaceutical group Syntimmune as part of a $50m series-B round led by Apple Tree Partners.

Another big success for Partners was the exit of portfolio company Spero, which went public in early November last year and raised $77m through its initial public offering . The IPO marked the sixth monetisation out of PIF’s portfolio of 29 companies.

According to Kitterman, Partners is also currently turning its attention to the gene therapy space, with plans to launch two companies in the near future.

Thinking of ways to improve things for corporate venturing within the healthcare space, Kitterman said he wished to see more funds investing in the medical devices-side of the business, as opposed to the therapeutic side, where he feels most of the activity is currently focused.

He added: “One thing that’s been gratifying for us is to see the corporate venture actors take more risk in earlier stages, where capital is actually more needed – that’s been very interesting to witness, and hopefully this trend will continue.”

In parallel to his functions at Partners, Kitterman also serves as executive director of the Boston Biomedical Innovation Center, a program developing technologies in the areas of heart, lung, blood and sleep and funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). He is also a founder of Mass Medical Angels – a seed- stage investment group focused on life sciences and healthcare.

Most of Kitterman’s free time goes to his three teenage daughters, he said, with whom he loves travelling and engaging in outdoor activities.