Undead Sanderling Ventures Plans to Raise Seventh Fund

At the beginning of the year, Forbes included San Diego’s Sanderling Ventures on its latest list of venture capital’s walking dead “zombie funds,” saying the firm hasn’t been able to raise a new fund since it raised $421 million for its last fund in 2004. But wouldn’t you know, Sanderling has sprung back to life, according to PE Hub, which reports today that the firm plans to raise a seventh fund, its first in seven years.

Sanderling’s Tim Wollaeger did not respond to an e-mail I sent him earlier today.

But as PE Hub notes, Sanderling’s spirits were no doubt revived by some recent liquidity events. Alexion Pharmaceuticals paid $111 million (not including future milestone payments) in late January to acquire Cambridge, MA-based Taligen Therapeutics, and PE Hub indicates that Sanderling held about a 30 percent ownership stake in Taligen. Another Sanderling portfolio company, West Lafayette, IN-based Endocyte (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ECYT]]) went public on Feb. 4, raising close to $79 million, with proceeds intended to finance late-stage trials of a new anti-cancer drug.

PE Hub also noted that Sanderling put some money in recent years in Lineagen, Gemin X Pharmaceuticals, and InfraReDx.

As any fan of horror films will tell you, pronouncing that something is dead—or even walking dead—is practically a guarantee it will come back to bite you.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.