Hopen Nabs $25M for Second Fund

Grand Rapids, MI-based Hopen Life Science Ventures has pulled in $25 million in a first close of its second fund, the venture firm announced yesterday. It’s still opening up the fund to another crop of limited partners, and hopes to close the fund at a total of $50 million by January 2012.

Hopen aims to invest in eight to 12 companies from the fund, focusing on technologies in the drug, medical device, and diagnostic spaces. The firm has already invested in four companies from Hopen Life Science Fund II, three of which are based in Michigan. That includes medical device startup TransCorp Spine and personalized cancer therapy developer Intervention Insights, both out of Grand Rapids, as well as Kalamazoo-based drug developer Metabolic Solutions Development Company.

The fourth investment from the fund was in Minnetonka, MN-based NeoChord, a medical device developer focused on mitral valve repair in the heart. Hopen launched its first fund in 2006 and has seven companies in that portfolio.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.