Almost 18 months ago, Domain Associates and the Russian state technology firm Rusnano agreed to jointly invest as much as $760 million in life sciences deals in the U.S. and Russia. Yesterday, the partners said they have completed their fifth deal—joining a $55 million equity round in ReVision Optics, a Lake Forest, CA-ophthalmic company.
ReVision, founded in 1996 as IntraLens Vision, has been developing a corneal inlay (now in late-stage clinical trials) to improve presbyopia, the age-related loss of near-sighted vision.
Domain, the life sciences venture firm based in San Diego and Princeton, NJ, would not specify how much capital it put into the deal. Domain and the Rusnano subsidiary RusnanoMednvest joined existing investors Canaan Partners, ProQuest Investments, InterWest Partners, and a new investor, Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. in the $55-million round.
To Domain partner Brian Dovey, though, the ReVision investment is the latest example in a series of promising initiatives that Domain and Russnano have engineered since March, 2012. In the statement, Dovey is quoted saying, “Put simply, this investment partnership is delivering results.”
“To get the deal done at all, with the 11-hour time difference, different legal systems, and different ways of doing business, is kind of a testament to both sides working to really make this work,” Dovey told me by phone yesterday.
“In our first year of working together Domain, Rusnano, and other investors have teamed up to deploy $173 million in capital, which includes a significant contribution by Rusnano, to support five [Domain portfolio] companies that are developing
