Astellas Pharma Inc. and DigiTx Partners announced that Astellas has launched DigiTx Partners, a digital health investment company in partnership with MPM Capital, Inc. (MPM Capital). DigiTx Partners will invest in the digital health space broadly, with a special focus on companies which create solutions that improve patient outcomes and provide substantial synergy with a broader pharma business. Although the emphasis will be on earlier stage companies, investments will be made in both start-ups and growth stage companies.

“Exploring unprecedented medical solutions by leveraging Astellas’ strengths in the innovative drug business and integrating these strengths with various medical and healthcare areas is one of the important initiatives of our “Creating Innovation” strategy as part of Astellas Strategic Plan. Through the investment activities of DigiTx Partners, we will explore the business opportunities in the growing field of digital health and extend our knowledge in the area. We look forward to supporting those companies with technologies that will deliver innovative solutions impacting patients’ healthcare and wellness,” said Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief strategy officer, Astellas.

The effort will be led by David Kim, MD, who has deep investing and operating experience in both the healthcare and digital sectors.  He was most recently the chief operating officer of Lumiata, Inc. a venture-backed predictive analytics company which is positioned at the intersection of data science and medical science. In addition to his prior successful investment experiences at MPM Capital, David served as a partner at Pinnacle Ventures LLC, investing both equity and venture debt funds, and worked as an equity research analyst at several financial institutions. David is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (MD) and Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA).

“In the digital health space, there is no shortage of innovative technologies and companies that would markedly improve healthcare and the effective delivery of this care to the community.  DigiTx Partners aims to identify and foster those companies that will meaningfully contribute to this improvement. From day one, it will be able to leverage the considerable resources of both Astellas and MPM Capital to execute on this goal,” remarked David.