William Harrington Joins Osage University Partners as Managing Partner

BALA CYNWYD, PA--(Marketwire - Jan 5, 2012) - Osage University Partners today announced that William (Bill) Harrington has joined the firm as a Managing Partner. Bill previously spent twelve years as a Partner at Three Arch Partners investing in early stage healthcare companies. Osage University Partners is a novel venture capital fund that has partnered with over forty leading universities to make direct investments in their most promising startup companies. In January 2011, Osage held its final closing on its inaugural fund, achieving its $100 million fundraising target.

During Bill's twelve years at Three Arch, he led investments in and served as a director of nearly twenty healthcare companies, a number of which had their origin as university spinouts. He most recently served on the boards of Cameron Health, Baxano, Voyage Medical, Nevro Corporation, APT Pharmaceuticals, and Centerre Healthcare. Prior to entering venture capital in 1999, Bill spent a decade as an interventional radiologist, working with promising new imaging technologies, medical devices, and minimally invasive surgical procedures. Bill holds an MD from Harvard Medical School, an MBA from UC Berkeley, and a BS in Biology and Chemistry from Tufts University. Bill is a CFA charterholder.

"We are excited to have someone of Bill's caliber join Osage University Partners," said Robert Adelson, Managing Partner. "Bill has over a decade of partner-level experience at a top-tier venture fund managing over $1 billion in healthcare investments. Bill combines his extensive investment experience with a strong clinical background, which will be critical in evaluating university life science opportunities. We anticipate that healthcare investments will represent half of Osage University Partners' portfolio."

Osage University Partners has created a unique model through which it manages the coinvestment rights held by its affiliated universities. These coinvestment rights provide Osage with contractual access to invest in the future financings of some of the most promising startup companies that have licensed technology from those universities. Affiliate universities then share in Osage's profit and can use their proceeds to stimulate further education, research, and commercialization initiatives. Universities nationwide collectively create approximately 600 new startups each year based on their research discoveries and have created nearly 5,000 new startups over the last ten years.

"Osage University Partners provides a new approach to investing in the venture capital asset class that offers many advantages over historical models and affords our university partners a means of unlocking an otherwise untapped opportunity," said Dr. Harrington. "The firm has very strong university partners and terrific deal access. It tracks the progress of a very large group of university start-ups and selects the strongest in which to invest. The firm has had great success in partnering with top universities and raising a first fund in what has been an exceptionally difficult fundraising environment, a testament to the excitement and interest in a truly novel investment strategy."

Osage University Partners invests in both early and later stage companies with ties to its affiliated universities. The fund invests across a range of life science and technology sectors, including therapeutics, medical devices and diagnostics, energy, advanced materials, semiconductors, and information technology. The fund has invested in sixteen companies to date. Of those, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, a diagnostic company focused on Alzheimer's disease, was acquired by Eli Lilly and Gevo, a biofuels company producing isobutanol from biomass, completed a successful IPO in 2011.

Osage University Partners is a member of a family of investment funds developed by Osage Partners. Bill will be working out of Osage's Bala Cynwyd headquarters.

About Osage Partners
Founded in 1990, Osage Partners is a family of investment funds located just outside of Philadelphia, PA. Osage Partners manages in excess of $200 million. Current fund strategies include Osage Venture Partners, an early stage enterprise technology fund focused on the Mid-Atlantic region, and Osage University Partners, a multi-stage fund that invests in university startups across a range of sectors. Under the Osage Partners umbrella, member funds cross-fertilize ideas, leverage internal expertise and share networks and resources.