This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Royal Bank of Canada is backing the country’s largest life sciences venture capital fund in two decades, making it one of the few Bay Street institutions to invest in the surging domestic sector.
to entice Canadian asset managers outside Quebec – where support has been strong – to back the sector.Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which invested US$20-million in Fusion Pharmaceuticals months before the Hamilton cancer therapy developer’s IPO in June, 2020 Lumira is raising its fourth fund with a target of reaching US$200-million to back Canadian and U.S. drug and medical technology developers. It is about three-quarters of the way to its goal and is already larger than any Canadian biotech fund since the early 2000s. Managing general partner Peter van der Velden said an unidentified Chinese pharmaceutical company has also invested, and that most additional capital would likely come from outside Canada.
Two Lumira-backed U.S. companies, Bardy Diagnostics and Engage Therapeutics, have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars each since June, and Toronto digital health care company Think Research Corp.“Financial returns are why we are in business,” Lumira managing director Gerry Brunk said. “But those result in concrete, meaningful impact on patients around the world.”