Flower power

In three years, Forbion Capital Partners has turned a Japanese pharma's discarded cardiovascular asset into a return that could reach 50x. The key to the payday was the firm's conviction that prior failures of other cholesteryl ester transfer protein inhibitors were compound-specific.

Forbion formed Dezima Pharma B.V. in 2012 to develop TA-8995, a CETP inhibitor that the biotech licensed from Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. (Tokyo:4508) for undisclosed terms (see BioCentury, Jan. 28, 2013). ...