University of California-aligned Mission Bay Capital's third fund attracted UC Investments, Eli Lilly, Astellas Pharma and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as limited partners.

Mission Bay Capital, the venture capital arm of University of California-aligned commercialisation office California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), has raised $60m for its third life sciences fund from partners including UC Investments. Mission Bay also secured contributions from chemicals and pharmaceuticals firm Zambon’s Zcube unit in addition to drug makers Eli Lilly and Astellas Pharma, with the latter contributing through subsidiary Astellas Venture Management. Private equity firm Banyan Pacific Capital, venture capital firm Mayfield and law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati are among the other limited partners along with unnamed family offices and other investors. Mission Bay’s third fund will follow its precursors in backing biotech-focused spinouts and concepts from its Bay Area-based life sciences incubator, MBC BioLabs. QB3’s activities span three UC campuses – UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz. The second Mission Bay fund closed with $25m in 2015 from partners including UCSF Foundation, the investment unit of University of California, San Francisco, as well as healthcare firm Novozymes and real estate development company Sobrato Organisation’s corporate venturing arm, Sobrato Capital. Recent Mission Bay investments include a contribution to metabolism and protein misfolding disease treatment developer Glycomine’s $33m series B round in August 2019 which also lured big pharma corporates Novo, Asahi Kasei Pharma and Chiesi, with the latter leveraging its Chiesi Ventures unit. Douglas Crawford, managing director of Mission Bay Capital, said: “We are thrilled to have a fresh pool of capital to invest into promising young companies. “The more than doubling of our fund from $25m in Fund II to $60m in Fund III is aligned with the expansion of our incubators in San Carlos and the addition of experienced bio-entrepreneur Robert Blazej to our management team. “Alongside our new and returning investors, we look forward to supporting even more exciting early-stage biotechs.”

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