reprint
back

Radius Ventures Names Former Pfizer Exec Venture Partner
By VentureWire Staff Reporters
3/3/2003
NEW YORK -- Radius Ventures, a health and life sciences venture capital firm, named George Milne, retired Pfizer executive vice president of global research and development, as venture partner. Dr. Milne, 59, is the first on Radius's five person team with major experience in a big pharmaceutical company. He will be mostly responsible for new investments from Radius's $73.5 million second fund, closed in February.

Dr. Milne served in research and development at Pfizer for 32 years until his retirement last August. Among other efforts, Dr. Milne managed and later oversaw Pfizer's strategic investments in collaborations with various smaller pharmaceutical, chemical, and medical technology firms. During his tenure the annual cost of operating this external alliance portfolio grew from $27 million to $228 million. "I led Pfizer in global investments that took me to Japan, Australia, and across the U.S.," said Dr. Milne, "At the senior research level I met with leaders of U.S.-based and global pharmaceutical companies -- people who can become collaborators and potential acquirers of Radius-backed companies," he added. Radius still plans to limit investments to the United States.

Dr. Milne sits on the boards of two public companies, Mettler-Toledo, a laboratory tool manufacturer, and Charles River Laboratories, a provider of animal research models and other research tools. He also joined the board of venture capital-backed Athersys, a functional genomics and biopharmaceutical company. "I've selected these boards to have access to multiple perspectives," said Dr. Milne.

Dr. Milne said productivity all over the pharmaceutical industry is not up to the level it should be. "There are two major reasons why compounds fail," he said. "One is the hypothesis was wrong, the concept failed. The other, and the far more common one, is that the chemical interaction did not work, the compound was not specific enough, did not get proper toxicity."

Dr. Milne said that as pharmacogenomic discoveries are made, the level of specificity of targets rises, but so does the regulatory barriers posed by conservative government agencies. "They are placing high demands on safety and toxicity, and we have not made progress faster than the rising regulatory barriers," he said.

Dr. Milne joins Daniel Lubin and Jordan Davis, managing partners who founded Radius Ventures in 1997. The firm also includes venture partner Peter Origenes and principal Ellie Tan. Radius currently manages almost $100 million and invests across sectors of the health and life science industry including medical devices, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare information technology and healthcare services. It aims to invest in companies with low valuations.

http://www.radiusventures.com