Visterra secured seed financing in 2008 from three leading life sciences venture firms: Polaris Venture Partners, Flagship Ventures, and Lux Capital Management.
Polaris invests in seed, early stage and middle market companies in high growth industries. As the lead or co-lead investor, Polaris takes an active and long-term role in helping management teams build highly successful businesses. Polaris has over $3 billion under management and current investments in more than 90 companies. For more information, please visit www.polarisventures.com.
Flagship Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on creating, financing, and building innovative companies in the Life Science and Technology sectors. Flagship manages over $600 million in early stage funds and has an active portfolio of over 40 companies. The firm's strategy is to balance its investments across three principal business sectors: Therapeutics, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics, and BioEnergy/Cleantech. Prior to its founding, Flagship's principals were involved as founders or investors in over 100 firms including: Adolor, AltaVista, Anesta, Antigenics, Aspect Medical, Astral Point, Celera Genomics, ChemGenics Pharmaceuticals, Color Kinetics, Chantry Networks, Cytyc, DataSage, Exact Sciences, IDEXX, PerSeptive Biosystems, Somatogen, Telecorp PCS and TripAdvisor.. For more information, please visit www.flagshipventures.com.
Lux Capital Management is a research driven investment firm focused on early stage investments in the physical and life sciences. Lux takes an active role in helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses in high growth sectors. Collectively, the investment team at Lux has started more than 20 companies including Nanosys, Vertex [VRTX], Illumina [ILMN], Caliper Technologies [CALP], Neurocrine Biosciences [NBIX], Lux Research, and Idun (acquired by Pfizer). For more information, please visit www.luxcapital.com.