Little more than a month after pledging $50 million to back drug discovery efforts at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, health care investment firm Deerfield Management is funding the creation of a new translational-focused venture at Johns Hopkins University. Called Bluefield Innovations, the new company will provide up to $65 million in initial funding over five years to support the commercialization of early stage therapeutic research at Johns Hopkins, with additional funding available to advance research showing strong commercial potential.

The 10 to 12 programs Bluefield is initially expected to back either will be out-licensed or will form the basis of spin-off companies, some of which Deerfield may fund.

Academic institutions are the locus of drug discovery today, Deerfield managing partner Jim Flynn told BioWorld. But, looking at the interactions among venture, pharma, NIH funding and other avenues that could carry those discoveries beyond academia, "there's really a dearth," he said. "Discoveries are piling up. It's frustrating to investigators. It's frustrating to academics, and it's a really shame from a patient benefit standpoint."

Taking an interest in solving the problem, Deerfield has been investigating ways to work more closely with institutions to speed the process. The creation of an agreement such as the new one governed through Bluefield or Deerfield's recent agreement with the Broad Institute establishes a set of terms, allowing for projects to go forward faster, facilitating more efficient discussions than would otherwise be possible. Such umbrella, platform or master agreements also have the advantage of creating a tangible package of support that researchers can consider.

Another driver Flynn pointed to is the arrival of new abilities to understand the genetic determinants of diseases, the ability to do smart cellular assays, the improvement in animal models, all of which "in our view makes the price of failure lower, and the price of success lower."

A joint steering committee, comprising three members from Johns Hopkins and three from Deerfield will identify the research that Bluefield will support through the preclinical development process – including basic research, proof of concept, target selection and investigational new drug-enabling studies. Dave Greenwald, director of business development for Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, is one of the representatives for the university.

"The enthusiasm at Hopkins is palpable," Greenwald said. At midday Thursday, he was expecting more that 100 attendees at an afternoon Bluefield Innovations kickoff event and already expected to have to hold additional sessions to meet the interest expressed by faculty, students and post-docs from programs across the university.

Bluefield's main focus will be on de-risking early stage therapeutic development that can meet unmet need across varied therapeutic areas. "Johns Hopkins is very good at understanding the basic pathobiology behind disease and then discovering novel drug targets," Greenwald said. "Where there's a gap in funding is for translating that into the clinic," he said.

Though other funding sources for researchers at Johns Hopkins exist, such as grants from the state of Maryland's TEDCO or alumni-backed endowments, early stage drug discovery efforts can sometimes demand more than those sources provide. Bluefield, Greenwald said, represents a significant investment into preclinical R&D, meant to complement those funding sources.

Deerfield has already backed two companies with roots at Johns Hopkins, Blade Therapeutics Inc. and Graybug Vision Inc., via venture funding syndicates. That created familiarity and comfort between them. But the agreement still took months to hammer out, ensuring incentives were aligned for both Deerfield and the university. Though the specifics of the agreement weren't disclosed, Greenwald called them "equitable" for both parties. (See BioWorld Today, March 11, 2015, and June 17, 2016.)

The money Deerfield is contributing to Bluefield, as well as the funds for its five-year partnership with the Broad Institute will come from the firm's Healthcare Innovations Fund LP, a $550 million health care venture capital fund it established in 2015. In an effort to create something of a virtuous cycle from its efforts, the firm is donating all profits from the collaborations not allocated to its investors to its Deerfield Partnership Foundation. The foundation supports health care initiatives that benefit children and adults in underserved communities and health care innovation.