Zoo Station

Venture Capital major, Kleiner Perkins has announced that it has raised a $200 million fund to fight global pandemic diseases. Obviously, the interest in such a fund is fueled by the spread of the Avian Flu. Whether KPCB’s definition of pandemic includes HIV/AIDS and Malaria remains to be seen.

“This is a call to action,” Brook Byers, a partner at the firm, said in an interview. He said Kleiner Perkins decided to start a separate fund, called the Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund, rather than make investments through its general funds to call attention to the issue. He said the fund was intended to yield profits, not act as a charity.
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Mr. Byers said private investments could help accelerate the preparations. “A lot of innovative companies are waiting for a grant from the government,” he said. “There’s not time to wait.” The fund would invest in about a dozen companies in the next three years, Mr. Byers said. While Kleiner Perkins, based in Menlo Park, Calif., normally invests in privately held start-up companies, its fund will invest mainly in established companies, including publicly traded ones.
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“It’s very time-critical,” he said, “so that leads us to want to invest in companies that have management teams and technology platforms already in place.” The first investment, of $15 million, was made in BioCryst Pharmaceuticals. The company, based in Birmingham, Ala., and publicly traded, has a drug entering early clinical trials that could be an alternative to Roche’s Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug that is being stockpiled by many governments and that has been in short supply.