What is a Chinese VC looking for when evaluating international opportunities?
Hongbo Lu and Jack B. Nielsen are Partners at Vivo Capital, a Beijing, Shanghai, HongKong, Taipei and Palo Alto based healthcare-focused investment firm formed in 1996. They are currently making investments from the $1.4B Vivo Capital Fund IX into private healthcare and from their $635M Vivo Opportunity Fund into public healthcare companies.
In Europe, Vivo Capital has exited investments in Actelion, AAA, Akari Therapeutics and Biotie Therapies and is currently invested in Ascendis Pharma, IO Biotech and Verona Pharma.
Hongbo Lu, Ph.D., is a Partner of Vivo Capital. Dr. Lu has close to 20 years of healthcare investment experience in both public securities and private companies. Prior to joining Vivo, she served as a Managing Partner at Lilly Asia Ventures (LAV). Prior to that, she served as a Managing Director at OrbiMed Advisors. Over her investment career, Dr. Lu has invested extensively in both China and the U.S. She previously served on the boards of Turning Point Therapeutics (TPTX), CrownBio (6554.TT, acquired by JSR), Avedro (AVDR, acquired by Glaukos), Passage (PASG, observer), and was extensively involved in the company incubations of ADARx, Alpiscience, Geneception, Perfuse, Terns, and Ronovo since inception. Dr. Lu started her Wall Street career as a biotech analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. and was involved in biotech start-ups in the Bay Area previously.
Dr. Lu earned a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington, an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated with honors from Tsinghua University.
Jack B. Nielsen is also a Partner of Vivo Capital. Prior to joining Vivo, Jack worked within the Novo A/S organisation and its venture activities since 2001 in several roles, most recently as a Senior Partner. From 2006 to 2012, Jack was employed as a Partner at Novo Ventures (US) Inc. in San Francisco, where he established the firm’s U.S. office. Jack currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Aligos Therapeutics, ALX Oncology, Harmony Biosciences, Instil Bio, Macologix, and Reata Pharmaceuticals Inc. He previously served on the board of directors of publicly-traded companies Akebia Therapeutics Inc., Merus, B.V and Apollo Endosurgery, Inc. He was also a member of the board of directors of a number of private companies including Alios Biopharma, Anokion, Kanyos Bio, NeoMend, Procept Biorobotics, ProteinSimple, Tobira Therapeutics, and Unchained Labs. From 1990 to 2001, Mr. Nielsen served various positions in Novo Nordisk A/S, ranging from R&D projects over large-scale production of enzymes to marketing and technical service in the textile areas.
Jack received a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University in Denmark and a Masters in Management of Technology from Center for Technology, Economics and Management; Technical University of Denmark.