A Medical Device Daily

ForSight Labs (Menlo Park, California), which aims to incubate new companies around promising ophthalmic medical device technologies, reported its creation with seed funding of $2.4 million.

The funding, for ForSight, which bills itself as the first pure-play ophthalmology incubator, comes from three venture capital firms: Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Versant Ventures.

The new incubator will be based on the collaboration between Eugene "Gene" de Juan, MD #150; one of the founders of Second Sight (Sylmar, California), a company developing an artificial retina (Medical Device Daily, July 11, 2005), and InnoRx (Mobile, Alabama), which makes artificial drug delivery devices, and was acquired last year by SurModics (Eden Prairie, Minnesota), and medical device incubator The Foundry (Menlo Park).

de Juan is Jean Kelly Stock Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California at San Francisco's School of Medicine and has frequently been listed as one of the top 10 practicing ophthalmologists in the U.S. He has co-founded five ophthalmic device companies and holds more than 40 drug and device patents.

"I looked at a number of successful device incubator models, but The Foundry's model stood out," de Juan told Medical Device Daily, citing The Foundry's unusually close alignment of interests between device developers and investors. "As an inventor, The Foundry model allows me to do my job unfettered."

ForSight Labs will combine de Juan's expertise in ophthalmic innovation with The Foundry's process for device company creation. That process begins with evaluation of device ideas from around the world, selection every year of one idea with "exceptional" medical and commercial potential, device prototyping and testing that leads to proof of concept, and, finally, creation of a full-fledged company capable of attracting venture capital investment.

Once funded, the new company eventually exits The Foundry's offices and begins an independent existence.

"Gene brings to ForSight Labs a great inventive spirit together with an understanding of the realities of how to work together to build a great new business," said Hanson Gifford, CEO and Foundry co-founder. "The potential for medical device applications in ophthalmology are exceptional. The demographics of eye disease, which affects growing numbers of the aging population, is combining with emerging device technologies to offer opportunities similar to those presented a decade ago for cardiovascular devices."

For The Foundry, the new venture offers a departure from the cardiovascular field, its primary source of innovation since its 1998 founding. And Hanson banners ForSight as the first pure-play ophthalmology incubator.

"We're looking to inventors in the ophthalmic sector to come to us with their ideas," said Hanson, noting that ForSight is currently lining up prospects and "always looking at potential new innovations."

de Juan said Forsight will investigate, among other things, disease states of the eye such as presbyopia, diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration as well as developing new drug-delivery technologies for the eye.

The three venture capital investors will each take a seat on the ForSight Labs board of directors. William Link, managing director of Versant Ventures, will serve as one of the venture capital directors.

Link has long experience in building ophthalmic device companies. These include Chiron Vision, which he co-founded and led as CEO, and AcuFocus (Irvine, California) and Second Sight, two current Versant ophthalmic investments.

The other new directors are Dave Stassen, managing director and co-founder of Split Rock Partners and Robert Bellas, Jr., general partner at Morgenthaler Ventures where he heads the Life Science team.

In other financing news:

Care Capital (Princeton, New Jersey) reported the closing of its third life sciences venture capital fund, Care Capital Investments III.

The fund capped investor commitments at $300 million, exceeding its original target of $225 million. About 20 institutional investors participated as limited partners in the fund.

Care Capital invests in life sciences companies, with a particular focus on later stage biotech and pharmaceutical enterprises.