BiF-4 Insights – Deborah Brooks – Michael J. Fox Foundation

We want to de-risk ideas and help move them towards being taken into clinical trials.

We sometimes add money to company investments in order to make Phase 1 trials more robust than originally planned:

• $4 million VC-funded trial, we incremented by $750k to fund neuro-imaging and extra doctor visit
• In order to get more data out of the trial

We are almost filling the role of an early stage investor (in some cases).

Giving foundation money to drug companies must be a challenge for people giving money to the foundation to take, but we are pushing the envelope in order to do whatever we can to accelerate the finding of a cure.

For more information on the talk, go here.