The family office of Jeff Bezos, and that of the late co-founder of Microsoft are among those seeding a new business concentrating on the kinds of biological research needed to find drug treatments that leave healthy cells intact while attacking the problem.

The family office of Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos is backing a biotech business poised to capture the surge in interest in health sectors amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bezos is putting money into a business of Sujal Patel, creator of data storage firm Isilon Systems, a business that managed to raise funds in the tough period following the implosion of the 1990s dotcom bubble.

His venture is called Nautilus Biotechnology; the company last week said that it had raised $76 million, taking total funding to more than $108 million. The funding round involved Vulcan Capital, the investment house of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Bezos’ FO was also involved. 

On its website, Nautilus Biotechnology says: “Nautilus Biotechnology will ignite a transformation in biomedical research by delivering a high-throughput, low-cost platform for analysing and quantifying the human proteome.” (A proteome is the set of proteins thought to be expressed by an organism.)

It added: “Nautilus is positioned to revolutionise proteomics, transform the way drugs are developed, and significantly improve the way human health is managed.”

Nautilus Biotechnology was founded in 2016.

When researching drugs, pharmaceutical companies want to find proteins that are common in diseased cells but not in healthy cells. They can then create a drug that attacks that protein and leaves healthy cells alone – a crucial step. 

As reported here last week, healthcare business deals backed by venture capital skyrocketed by 76 per cent in the first three months of 2020 from a year earlier as COVID-19 slammed the world (source: Preqin). See here for a related article about private markets investment in healthcare.

Interest in medical treatments and wider health concerns has sharpened because of the pandemic. The urgent hunt for vaccines and anti-viral treatments has put healthcare innovation and investment at the top of the financial agenda. The trend is significant for family offices, for example, because they are important sources of "patient capital". 

According to Preqin, the research group tracking alternative investments such as private equity and venture capital, VC-backed healthcare deals rose to $8.2 billion in Q1 2020, a 76 per cent rise. And that is 25 per cent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019. North America dominated Q1 2020 deal activity, bagging 56 per cent of the total number of deals, followed by Europe with 21 per cent and Asia with 17 per cent.