LOS ANGELES — This city is now home to its very first biotech venture firm: Dr. Beth Seidenberg, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins, will now be heading up a $320 million fund called Westlake Village BioPartners dedicated exclusively to the life sciences — and, potentially, helping build up the LA area as a new biotech hub.
Seidenberg, former chief medical officer of Amgen, is bringing on board Sean Harper — who by January will end his tenure as R&D head at the Los Angeles-area biotech. Some of the better-known companies in Seidenberg’s portfolio include ovarian cancer therapeutics company Tesaro, allogeneic T cell company Atara Biotherapeutics, and epigenetics player Epizyme.
STAT took a minute to chat with Seidenberg about her new firm’s vision. The conversation’s been lightly edited for clarity.
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