A team of Connecticut biotech veterans is turning the proceeds of a $1.3 billion acquisition into a platform for the next generation of life sciences startups.<\/p>\n
When pharmaceutical giant Merck acquired New Haven biotech startup Modifi Biosciences in 2024 in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion, it was a major win for Connecticut\u2019s growing life sciences sector.<\/p>\n
For Modifi co-founder Dr. Ranjit Bindra, it also created an opportunity.<\/p>\n
Merck wanted Modifi\u2019s cancer drug program and intellectual property, but not the company\u2019s laboratory space, equipment or much of the infrastructure it had built.<\/p>\n
Rather than let those resources disappear, Bindra and his fellow founders launched CapeHaven, a New Haven-based venture that aims to help academic researchers turn promising scientific discoveries into biotech startups by providing business guidance, industry connections and access to capital. In May, the company announced it had raised $2.5 million toward a $10 million fundraising goal.<\/p>\n
CapeHaven is the latest venture from a group of Connecticut biotech entrepreneurs that includes Bindra, investor Kevin Rakin, biotech executive Mike Dillon and Yale chemistry professor Seth Herzon. <\/p>\n
Bindra, a Yale School of Medicine professor and physician-scientist, said the founders realized they could use their experience building biotech companies to help other researchers commercialize scientific discoveries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized, \u2018God, we\u2019ve got such expertise,\u2019\u201d Bindra said when describing the discussions that followed the Modifi sale.
\nA startup platform
\nUnlike traditional venture capital firms, CapeHaven is not looking to just write checks, nor is it a conventional incubator renting lab space to young companies.<\/p>\n
Instead, the founders describe it as a venture creation firm that helps build companies from the ground up.<\/p>\n
That process can be daunting even for accomplished scientists, Bindra said.<\/p>\n
The founding group brings experience from several Connecticut biotech ventures, but Modifi is the most visible example of the type of company they hope to help create.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2021, Modifi was based on cancer research conducted by Bindra and Herzon. The company raised a $10 million seed round led by HighCape Capital, a venture firm founded by Rakin, and advanced a new cancer treatment approach before being acquired by Merck three years later.<\/p>\n
Bindra said helping lead Modifi gave him a deeper understanding of the business side of launching a biotech company.<\/p>\n
That experience now shapes CapeHaven\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n
The company, which is still reviewing potential clients and investment opportunities, will help startup founders identify legal counsel, navigate licensing agreements, recruit leadership talent, secure laboratory space and connect with investors. Rather than charging fees for those services, CapeHaven will receive an equity stake in the companies it supports.<\/p>\n
The founders say their longstanding relationships within Connecticut\u2019s biotech community provide an advantage when evaluating potential investments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can do all the (due) diligence in the world on the company,\u201d Bindra said, but to truly evaluate an opportunity, investors must understand \u201cthe people behind it, their track record, and what\u2019s not in their slide deck.\u201d<\/p>\n
CapeHaven works with Yale Ventures, the university\u2019s startup support organization, but operates independently of Yale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe view this as complementary to them, because Yale Ventures provides a lot of resources on their own,\u201d Bindra said. \u201cBut as you dive out into the startup world, it\u2019s still something separate from the institution itself, and sometimes you want that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh Geballe, managing director of Yale Ventures, said it is encouraging to see an experienced New Haven-based team focused on helping academic discoveries become companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cCapeHaven brings together scientific, operational and entrepreneurial experience that can help accelerate the translation of promising discoveries emerging from the Yale ecosystem,\u201d Geballe said.<\/p>\n
Connecticut Innovations, the state\u2019s venture capital arm, invested $200,000 in CapeHaven.<\/p>\n
Daniel Wagner, CI\u2019s senior managing director, said the agency\u2019s decision to invest was driven by confidence in the founders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe invested in CapeHaven because of our longstanding relationship and successful investing history with Kevin Rakin and Ranjit Bindra,\u201d Wagner said. \u201cWe have backed them both together and independently across multiple ventures and have consistently been impressed by their ability to identify opportunities, build teams and execute.\u201d
\nIntentionally lean
\nIn addition to Connecticut Innovations, other investors that contributed to the recent capital raise included family members, high-net-worth individuals and former Modifi investors. The founders have also invested their own money.<\/p>\n
The funding will help CapeHaven expand its scientific and venture creation team, evaluate early-stage therapeutic opportunities and launch its first portfolio company, BrainStorm Cancer Therapeutics, which is developing treatments for brain tumors.<\/p>\n
Meantime, CapeHaven remains intentionally lean. The company currently relies heavily on consultants and operates with a small core team. Bindra said the founders want to keep operating costs low and avoid the significant overhead that hampered some biotech startups during the industry\u2019s boom years.<\/p>\n
The approach reflects broader changes in the biotech financing environment.<\/p>\n
Investors have become more selective, venture funding has become harder to secure and uncertainty surrounding federal research funding has created additional challenges for academic scientists hoping to commercialize their discoveries, Bindra said.<\/p>\n
He believes those trends have widened the gap between academic research and venture-backed company formation.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he sees an increasing number of researchers interested in entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
Having spent decades at Yale, Bindra said, he has witnessed growing momentum within New Haven\u2019s life sciences ecosystem and more faculty members seeking advice on launching companies.<\/p>\n
CapeHaven hopes to capitalize on that demand. The company has reviewed roughly a dozen potential opportunities and is actively evaluating several prospects, Bindra said.<\/p>\n
Over the next five years, he said, the founders hope to build a portfolio of startups, help secure larger rounds of financing and potentially guide some companies toward acquisition or strategic partnerships.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a really good idea, then you basically can come to us and we\u2019ll help you pull it all together,\u201d Bindra said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of Connecticut biotech veterans is turning the proceeds of a $1.3 billion acquisition into a platform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,137],"class_list":["post-774571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entrepreneurship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}