This Rare Disease Day, Let’s Do More

There are some 7,000 known rare diseases in the world today and they affect an estimated 25-30 million people in the United States alone.

This day, celebrated every year on February 28th, holds special significance to me because my six-year-old son is one of the 1 in 10 Americans with a rare disease. In fact, my son’s “disease” is so rare, it doesn’t even have a name.

We were given a coordinate on the long arm of Chromosome 5 that represents his micro-deletion of 61 genes. This missing genetic information causes him hearing loss, hypotonic cerebral palsy, and global developmental delays.

Through our journey of diagnosis and the inevitable “What can be done?” questions, I’ve become acutely aware of how much is yet to learn about our genes and what each one does. Few medical treatment options are available for my son or our larger community. We fall into the approximately 80% of rare diseases that have a genetic component and 90% of rare diseases that don’t have an FDA-approved treatment.

I know the fear of the unknown and the powerlessness in wishing I could do more for him.

This experience motivates me in my role at iSelect, helping to support and grow our network of stakeholders who drive innovation in healthcare. This includes investors, startups, doctors and scientists creating new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies across a number of medical conditions.

Innovators making a difference

While the issue of funding research for rare diseases remains, there are plenty examples of emerging technologies that I am excited about supporting through iSelect, in hopes that they will also benefit the rare disease community. These include:

GeneMatters, a telehealth platform that makes the genetic counseling process 4-5 times more efficient than it is today.

Flywheel, a startup that has developed a cloud-based collaboration platform in which scientists across the world can share reproducible science and work together to advance discovery at an accelerated pace.

Cofactor Genomics, which is using proprietary RNA sequencing technology and machine learning algorithms to diagnose disease.

Holobiome, which is developing a platform for microbiome-based therapeutics to treat diseases of the central and enteric nervous systems.

Neuros Medical, which is focused on developing proprietary therapies for unmet needs to patients worldwide, including a proprietary technology focused on the elimination of chronic pain.

And so many more.

As iSelect continues to grow its healthcare network, we have taken an active interest in connecting with people working in gene therapy, precision diagnostics, synthetic biology, tissue engineering, microbiome therapeutics, AI in drug discovery, brain-computer interfaces, nutrition’s role in healthcare, and more. These are all areas that could have a profound impact on the rare disease community as knowledge and innovation grows.

As my son’s issues are neurologically based and due to genetic abnormalities, I’m particularly interested to follow developments in gene therapy and anything that helps further our knowledge of the brain.

Beyond him, beyond us, I’m excited to see how all of these technologies will help people with a range of diseases both common and rare, and profoundly change the lives of many.

To get updates on the healthcare technologies iSelect is watching and investing in, sign up here.

Consideration

With 2021 well underway and with public markets still strong, we think it is an important time to highlight some of the key private market, venture investment themes that iSelect fund has identified for the year. We believe technologies transforming the Agriculture, Food and Wellness markets will flourish, with a focus on four areas: technologies that enable better food choices to drive better health outcomes, technologies that drive better, more profitable farm operations, technologies that drive the Consumerization of Healthcare, and biome-based treatment technologies. At iSelect, we invest for impact AND performance. We offer qualified investors access to emerging growth companies through our national venture capital strategy. Our unique structure allows our investors to continue to invest in these companies as they develop.

Timing

Why is now the right time for venture? The answer is that now is not explicitly the right time. Venture is something we need in our economy at all times. Now is not better than any other particular time. The question is, why ever stop? When we look at the challenges we’re facing in food and healthcare the reality is there is someone, somewhere who has an insight about how to build a product that will solve those problems. And if they put the right resources to it, they will succeed. As long as we need new technology to make life better or make our lives more enjoyable, we need venture capital to help fuel those entrepreneurs.

What is iSelect as a product?

iSelect is a very unique product, but when you break it into its parts it’s fairly easy to understand. On the front end we’re a traditional venture capital fund. We have a diligence process. We have an investment process. We have categories of industries where we have focus and real expertise, and we invest in companies in those areas that meet requirements for the fund. On the back end we’re unique in that we don’t raise a large amount of capital at one time and deploy it over the life of our fund. Each deal that we bring onto the fund, our investors have to prove and determine to invest in that deal. We have to constantly prove our diligence standards. It’s accessible, transparent and easy for investors to come in and see our comprehensive process.

What is the ideal iSelect company?

We are looking for founders that are passionate and we want the problem they’re trying to solve to be big, real, and painful. We want the solution to be revolutionary and we want our capital to be able to help them solve that problem. We want to know that they have customers involved and that the solution they’ve come up with actually meets those customers’ and market needs. And we want the team to be capital efficient with the money they’re spending.

What does the ideal iSelect company look like?

We’re looking for a company that has an opportunity to have a 10x return to our investment or greater in a period of three to seven years. What excites us at iSelect are companies that are solving big problems. We want companies that are going to be the Monsantos of the future. Not just in the size and the scope, but the impact they have on people’s lives. We want to create positive impacts on people’s lives, so we invest in areas like agricultural production and areas like producing healthy foods for our kids. They are problems that impact real people’s lives on a daily basis. That’s what we’re trying to do at iSelect. We’re trying to solve the big problems out there. Find ways to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are the real heroes out there getting up every morning, beating away at these things that are problems that you and me and everyone else faces in their everyday lives.

What is iSelect?

iSelect is a venture capital firm. What that means is we look at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and we apply tough diligence standards to each of them, looking at whether the team has a good plan for growing the business, whether the team is qualified and credible, and more. We do that to resolve the few who provide the best opportunities for investors. And then iSelect takes that smaller set of investments and goes to investors who are interested in venture capital and provides a way for them to invest in these companies, either individually or all at once. We co-invest alongside other venture capitalists. We source transactions through to an exit where the company would become public or get bought. And we manage that whole investment process on behalf of our investors.