Undisclosed Autobahn

Why a German drug maker, UCLA and a Palo Alto VC tired of short-term investments started a ‘virtual incubator’

San Francisco Business Times, Ron Leuty, 6-25-20

By the time venture capitalist Srinivas Akkaraju met Werner Lanthaler, the CEO of Evotec SE, he had tired of the short-term definition of “value creation” in the drug-development industry. The founder and managing general partner of Samsara BioCapital, a Palo Alto firm started in 2016 and managing $410 million in assets for endowments, foundations and family offices, wanted to find new ways of tapping and quickly translating early-stage science into new, long-term companies. That’s when he met Lanthaler. Evotec, a German drug discovery and development organization with experience across a wide range of diseases, had created what it called a “bridge model” to fast-track early-stage academic research into startup companies.

The result: Autobahn Labs, a “virtual incubator” set up by Samsara, Evotec and family fund KCK Ltd. that disclosed Wednesday it signed a master agreement with UCLA to quickly determine if certain academic drug research could be spun into commercial gold. In a way, Autobahn Labs is one part QB3, the University of California program designed to help academic scientists at UC Berkeley, UCSF and UC Santa Cruz partner with life sciences companies or spin out companies of their own; one part Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs and its penchant to invest in out-of-the-box technologies; and one part BridgeBio Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ: BBIO), the Palo Alto company that creates single-asset genetic disease companies from academic research.

But Autobahn Labs is unique, said Michelle Kim-Danely, Autobahn’s senior vice president of operations. It is working with universities and other research organizations, starting with UCLA, but it is tapping the expertise of scientific teams at various Evotec sites globally to translate the science as well as the funding of Samsara and KCK to invest up to $5 million per project...

Financial terms of Autobahn’s deal with UCLA were not disclosed. Naiberg said the umbrella “master agreement” falls under a confidentiality agreement but includes licensing, milestone and royalty payments from Autobahn...

Full story at https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/06/24/ucla-autobahn-labs-evotec-samsara-biocapital.html