The American Breakthrough Properties Fund, which establishes and manages real estate ventures specializing in complexes for life sciences companies and research institutions, reports a huge $ 3 billion fundraiser for investments in the field.
The real estate fund, established in 2019, is a collaboration between the Bellgreen family’s Bellco Capital company, headed by Israeli-American biomed billionaire Prof. Arie Baldgrin, and the leading American real estate company Tishman Spayer. The fund is managed by Dan Baldgreen, Arie’s son. Its current fundraising was attended by the local institutional bodies Harel, Clal and Amitim, who together invested a sum of over $ 350 million.
The Breakthrough Foundation has identified significant growth in the biomedical field, particularly on the U.S. East Coast, and the need for different construction for the field. The company specializes in establishing laboratory complexes and research campuses that encourage collaboration between researchers, to create new ideas.
Life sciences research is one of the areas of office real estate in the US that is less affected by the transition of some companies to telework or part-time telecommuting, because at least some of the research and development in the field requires physical presence.
Prof. Arie Baldgreen founded the cancer drug development company Kate Pharma, which was sold in 2017, for $ 12 billion, to Gilead, in one of the largest deals in the field for a company that has yet to make sales. It was the largest of a number of Baldgreen exits, each yielding between hundreds of millions of dollars and more than a billion dollars.
Baldgreen today divides his time between this activity and many other investments in the field of biomed, including Alogen, which is traded on the NASDAQ for $ 1.2 billion, and the Israeli company Eugogen, which is traded on about $ 160 million. He continues to invest in companies through the funds. In which he is a partner: Two River and Vida Ventures.
Bellco Capital, through which the Baldgreen family (Arie and his wife Rebecca) own the Breakthrough real estate fund, is an investment company founded in 2003, and is a center for life sciences entrepreneurship. B, whose launch is expected this year, which includes CRISPR Therapeutics, and the Torrey View by Breakthrough project in San Diego, whose construction began last year.
In addition to its operations in Boston and San Diego, which are considered dominant cities in the life sciences in the United States, the company has built, or begun to build, projects in Philadelphia in the United States, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
According to the foundation’s CEO, Dan Baldgreen, “We set up Breakthrough just three years ago, with a mandate to develop innovative and inspiring environments for entrepreneurs and biomed researchers, on the path to discovering life-saving treatments. We look forward to using our assets to support the next generation of significant inventions. “
According to Tishman Spear CEO and co-chair of Breakthrough Rob Rob Spear, “There is an urgent, growing need for innovative lab complexes in successful locations. We can deliver such across the U.S. and Europe.”