Dementia Discovery Fund

Angus Grant serves as CEO and leads the investment team, supported by Chief Scientific Officer Tetsu Maruyama. Grant joined in 2021 from a career spanning executive R&D roles at Roche and Celgene. The fund's Investment Committee draws on scientific advisory input from the neuroscience divisions of its pharmaceutical limited partners.

The fund sources opportunities through the academic neuroscience networks of its LPs' R&D organizations, direct relationships with university technology transfer offices in the UK and US, and referrals from its Scientific Advisory Board. Its pharma backers — including Biogen, Eli Lilly, and Johnson & Johnson — provide visibility into preclinical assets that may be deprioritized internally but viable as standalone ventures.

It operates as a specialist venture capital firm. The vehicle was established in 2015 as a public-private partnership, not a family office. Its limited partners include the UK Department of Health and Social Care and seven global pharmaceutical companies, and the fund charges management fees and carried interest on a standard venture capital model.

The Dementia Discovery Fund makes direct equity investments in early-stage biotech and neuroscience companies. It does not operate as a fund-of-funds. Its capital is deployed as lead or co-lead in seed and Series A rounds, with reserves for follow-on investments as programs advance toward clinical proof-of-concept.

The seven pharma LPs — Biogen, Eli Lilly, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Takeda, and Lundbeck — are passive investors in the fund. They do not control investment decisions, but they provide scientific advisory support and represent potential acquirers or licensing partners for portfolio companies. This creates an information advantage without constraining the fund's independent fiduciary duty.

The fund does not invest outside neurodegenerative disease. It explicitly excludes general CNS indications, oncology, cardiovascular, and platform technologies not directly tied to a dementia therapeutic hypothesis. Within dementia, it avoids pure symptomatic treatments without a disease-modifying mechanism.

The Dementia Discovery Fund does co-invest alongside generalist life-science VCs and corporate venture arms. Portfolio company Cerevance, for example, has raised from GV, F-Prime Capital, and the Dementia Discovery Fund in syndicated rounds. The fund's co-investment terms are standard venture-market practice, without preferential rights reserved for its pharma LPs.