On this week's episode of LA Venture, hear from Sean Harper, founding managing director of Westlake Village BioPartners, which has two new funds totaling $500 million that's catalyzing the L.A. biotech ecosystem. Harper is the former head of research and development at biopharmaceutical company Amgen. He shares his focus on therapeutics to improve human lives and starting Westlake with Beth Seidenberg.
<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
<ul class="ee-ul">
<li>Harper believes Google's <a href="https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphafold-a-solution-to-a-50-year-old-grand-challenge-in-biology" target="_blank">AlphaFold</a> and protein folding will be transformative, but doesn't want to overhype its potential.</li>
<li>Harper points out that a lot of what's making biology more of a quantitative, predictive science and translatable into new therapies for people comes from the introduction of non-biology technologies like robotics, x-ray or crystallography.</li>
<li>Westlake Village BioPartners has partnered with Alexandria Venture Investments which has helped to provide turnkey available laboratory space. This should help companies get set up quickly.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<em></em>"At some point, it's going to be possible to essentially reset the immune system. So it no longer believes that self antigens are foreign. If somebody brings forward a technology like that, it'll be transformative."<em> — Sean Harper<br>
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</blockquote>
<p>
<em><strong></strong></em><strong>Sean Harper</strong> attended medical school at the University of California at San Francisco, completed internal medicine and gastroenterology training at Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Nobel Laurette Phillip A. Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He held a number of key leadership positions at Amgen.
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Westlake Village BioPartners, the two-year-old Los Angeles venture capital firm investing in life science and therapeutic companies, has raised two new funds totaling $500 million. The announcement Tuesday brings the firm to $820 million in capital to date.
The first fund, called Opportunity 1, carves out $70 million for Westlake to invest Series B or later-stage rounds for companies they incubated or invested in previously.
Meanwhile, Westlake Village BioPartners 2 Fund is a $430 million stash for incubating and investing in about 12 Series A startups. The VC firm will also use that fund for other Series B or late-round investments.
<p>"Los Angeles is an emerging biotech community that is fresh and exciting, and we are seeing an explosion of new startups in this region," said Westlake's co-founding managing director Beth Seidenberg in a statement. </p><p>According to a recent report from <a href="https://www.biocom.org/" target="_blank">Biocom</a>, the nonprofit tracking life science companies across California, L.A. County brought in over $1.1 billion in government funding last year — the most of any county in California. The industry also employed over 93,000 people in the county.</p><p>The firm has so far invested in three new companies using that larger fund — a gene therapy startup in San Diego and two L.A. companies. </p><p>One of those is <a href="https://acelyrin.com/" target="_blank">ACELYRIN</a>, a biopharma company focused on immunology that today launched with a Series A round backed by Westlake. The funding amount was not disclosed. </p><p>More than half of the 11 companies Westlake has invested in or incubated using its first fund, set up in 2018, are L.A.-based. </p><p>"We believe technology can come from anywhere, but our preference is to build companies in Los Angeles to help build out a new ecosystem," Seidenberg said. "With these two new funds, we will be managing more early stage venture capital solely from the greater Los Angeles area than any other firm."</p>
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Last month, Lupe Duarte read an announcement from her colleagues that City of Hope was recruiting for a COVID-19 vaccine trial. The mother of three, who also cares for her infirm parents, volunteered immediately.
This afternoon the 48-year old project manager became the first patient to get a dose of the vaccine developed by a team of researchers at City of Hope.
She's part of the biotech institution's phase 1 trial, which tests a drug's safety typically over one to two years. The process is likely to last just three months as regulators speed up approval to deal with the pandemic. The next stage, expected to span about eight months, would test on more volunteers and further assess safety and efficacy.
<p>City of Hope is one of only a <a href="https://dot.la/covid-vaccine-los-angeles-2649451926.html" target="_self">handful of Southern California organizations</a> that are working on a vaccine. Their shot will require two doses and must be stored about 60 degrees below celsius, but the team is looking into whether it can be freeze dried and stored at room temperature. </p><p>"I think a lot of people still fear the clinical trial aspect," said Duarte, who is expecting a few check-in calls this weekend and plans to visit the clinic for regular blood samples. "There is no doubt in my mind that this is safe for me."</p><p>Duarte is no stranger to the trial process. She's worked in clinical research since 1996, beginning with prostate and lung cancer studies. Over this next year, as Duarte is monitored and observed for side effects to the vaccine, she'll experience clinical trials as a patient instead.</p><p>"If I'm healthy and I'm eligible and I get to participate, why shouldn't I?" she said. "I get to help others, like our cancer patients have done over the years."</p><p>She wants more people of color and Latinos, who have been especially hard hit in the pandemic, to participate in clinical trials. </p><p>Across the country, an estimated 237 biotech companies and research labs have joined the race to develop their own vaccinations as pharmaceutical giants prepare for the first wave of mass distributions. Just 38 of those, including the vaccine from City of Hope, have started clinical testing. </p><p>Very few companies will pull it off. Over 90% of clinical trials fail, said Esther Krofah, executive director of the Milken Institute's FasterCures. Her team has <a href="https://www.covid-19vaccinetracker.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tracked vaccine makers</a> since March, when just a couple dozen companies had entered phase 1 trials.</p><p>"We need to make sure we have incentives for second and third generation vaccines, to get as many of them over the finish line," she said. "The goal would be to have a handful or more that can meet the global demand."</p><p>Krofah said factors like temperature storage matter most when it comes time to distribute. But some vaccines in development do have a leg up, she said, including those requiring just a single dose.</p><p>"Those are very hopeful in that you might be able to scale without the burden of somebody coming back twice," she said. </p><p>Don J. Diamond, a City of Hope professor and vaccine researcher, said his team received the Federal Drug Association's go-ahead to start human trials for the vaccine a few weeks ago. Their vaccine utilizes a synthetic platform technology called an MVA to trigger the immune system by stimulating antibodies and T cells.</p><p>Duarte and her five siblings rotate as caretakers for their mother, who is bed-bound and immunocompromised. Her father was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. The vaccination gives her some sense of relief that she won't put her parents at risk. </p><p>"Cancer doesn't stop," she said by Zoom, hours before she would drive from her home in Glendora to the clinic in Duarte. "We still have to continue taking care of our parents."</p><p>In 28 days, Duarte will be back for her second dose. </p>
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