Portfolio Company Updates

Posted: August 21, 2023

Greetings Sidecar Fund II investors, and welcome aboard, for those investors who recently joined the Fund.

The first half of 2023 has been a busy one for MABA.

Top of the news was the finalization of the acquisition of one of MABA’s portfolio companies, Cerus Endovascular, by Stryker.  MABA Sidecar Fund I investors, as well as members of MABA’s internal investment Pool II and several individual MABA members all received the first installment of their return from the investment.  The acquisition was structured to include an up-front payment, followed by payments tied to the completion of specific milestones, [ Read more… ]

Posted: August 21, 2023

Greetings Sidecar Fund I investors.

The first half of 2023 has been a busy one for MABA.

Top of the news was, of course, the finalization of the acquisition of one of MABA’s portfolio companies, Cerus Endovascular, by Stryker.  MABA Sidecar Fund I investors, as well as members of MABA’s internal investment Pool II and several individual MABA members all received the first installment of their (your) return from the investment.  As we communicated in the past, the acquisition was structured to include an up-front payment, followed by payments tied to the completion of specific milestones, spaced over [ Read more… ]

Posted: January 30, 2023

Happy New Year, and welcome aboard, for those investors who recently joined Sidecar Fund II as investors.

Over the last year, MABA has made several new investments as well as several follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies.  A few of these qualified for co-investment by the Fund.

Due to the unique structure of Fund II, which is an open-ended Fund, different investors will end up with different baskets of portfolio companies, depending on the time they joined the Fund.

To make sure that you are able to see updates from the companies in your specific portfolio, we’ve designed and [ Read more… ]

Posted: December 24, 2021

Dear Sidecar Fund Investors,

We hope that everyone remains healthy and is doing well.

As we near the Fund’s second anniversary, the Fund has made six investments so far, several were in companies that were new to us, and several were in existing MABA portfolio companies, and there is room left for just one more large investment, before the Fund is fully invested.

The pandemic has affected a significant drop in applications in the first half of 2021, with numbers recovering somewhat, beginning in September.  This resulted in a much smaller than usual amount of companies entering diligence, with, [ Read more… ]

Posted June 11, 2021

Dear Sidecar Fund I investors,

We hope that everyone is healthy (and vaccinated) and doing well.

Our portfolio companies continue to execute on their plans and their regular reports are being updated to this site, as they are received.  I hope you are as happy to read of some of the progress being reported as we are. Also, I recently reached out to all of our portfolio company CEOs for an in-person update on their activities, which you can read in the attached Dashboard.

The general market is beginning to see a rebound, as Covid-19 cases decline, and restrictions [ Read more… ]

Posted December 22, 2020

We hope everyone is staying healthy and safe.

We are happy to announce that the Sidecar Fund has made an investment in Seneca Therapeutics, “developing a pipeline of best-in-class oncolytic immunotherapeutics that are highly effective in treating cancer patients with solid cancers.” They are trying to “convert the tumor microenvironment from cold to hot”, or, in other words, convert undruggable cancer targets into druggable candidates. They are led by an industry-experienced CEO, who recently joined the team.

Although the pandemic is currently seeing a significant surge in numbers, the recent release of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines provide [ Read more… ]

Posted: October 9, 2020

We hope that everyone is staying well and safe.

MABA just announced an exit from portfolio company Immunomic Therapeutics. MABA members were early investors in Immunomic Therapeutics which paid a dividend to investors of approximately 5X invested capital when licensing its allergy division to Astellas in 2015. After acquisition of a majority of its shares by HLB Co, Ltd., a multi-billion-dollar market cap Korean life sciences company, the company offered to buy shares back from remaining shareholders at approximately 4X invested capital for its early investors, increasing their yield, for those who accepted the offer, to 9X [ Read more… ]

Posted: April 22, 2020

I wanted to provide a quick update on our activities during the current Covid-19 crisis, which has affected every life and every business sector.

Companies in the life sciences are able to operate, but are facing extreme issues, such as:

–         Staff is at home, often taking care of kids out of school, etc.

–         Even when staff is healthy and available, companies must restrict the number of staff that can be on site at any given time, which affects all research, development and commercialization activities.

–         Non-Covid-19 related clinical trials are being postponed, and those currently running are being [ Read more… ]

Posted: March 26, 2020

We are happy to announce that the Sidecar Fund has made an investment in FemSelect (formerly POP Medical).

FemSelect is an Israeli-based company commercializing A mesh-free approach for pelvic floor fixation for Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP), which is a painful, debilitating medical condition that occurs when the normal support of the vagina is lost, resulting in the “sagging” or dropping of the female pelvic organs.

FemSelect received investment in the past from MABA members, as well as from one of MABA’s internal investment Pools. The current investment round included multiple MABA members – some of whom invested in [ Read more… ]

Posted: Jan 20, 2020

I want to share with you an opinion piece written by one of our MABA Steering Committee members, Jon Popke, who is also Executive Director, Toxicology with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

With all the uncertainly currently surrounding the current COVID-19 outbreak, it is important to pause from time-to-time to take stock of the remarkable technologies being deployed to combat the pending epidemic. Note, for example, that 2 separate clinical trials initiated in the U.S. this week to test potential therapies against the virus.

The first is a vaccine trial launched in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. The vaccine [ Read more… ]