David Mott at New Enterprise Associates has spearheaded the development of an orphan drug accelerator that plans to hunt down the best in vivo-stage assets in academia, biopharma and the nonprofits, assemble them in a portfolio of rare disease therapies and mold them into pipeline programs that can be spun out into a slate of new biotech companies.
NEA's high-profile biotech partner Mott--who helmed MedImmune until AstraZeneca ($AZN) came along and scooped it up for $15.6 billion--partnered with Pfizer Ventures and gained the support of Alexandria Real Estate Equities in piecing together the initial $16 million in startup funds for the newly coined Cambridge, MA-based Cydan.