NovaQuest Capital Management

Michael Bologna, Partner and Chief Investment Officer, leads investment decisions alongside Managing Partner Patrick Jordan and Partners Brian Axe, Robert Hester, and Ryan Wooten. Bologna and Jordan both date to the firm's pre-spinout era at Quintiles Transnational, where NovaQuest operated as an internal strategic investment group before becoming independent in 2010.

Product Finance is a late-stage, non-dilutive funding structure where NovaQuest provides capital to biopharmaceutical companies in exchange for a synthetic royalty or revenue interest on a specific approved or near-approval drug asset. The firm commits milestone-linked capital during the final development, regulatory, or early-commercial window. Because the structure avoids equity dilution, it appeals to biotech companies that want to retain upside on their platform while accessing growth capital for a lead asset.

NovaQuest was formed in 2000 as the strategic investment arm of Quintiles Transnational, the contract-research organization that later became IQVIA. In 2010, the investment team spun out as an independent firm, NovaQuest Capital Management, taking its biopharma-product-financing model with it. The firm no longer has a formal capital or governance tie to IQVIA, though the shared heritage informs NovaQuest's deal-sourcing network and therapeutic-area expertise.

NovaQuest typically does not invest in early-stage platform biotech companies. Its biopharma strategy targets late-stage, single-asset product financings where the drug has already generated clinical data or achieved regulatory approval. The private equity fund does invest in earlier-stage animal-health and life-science services companies — including venture-stage investments such as Gallant Therapeutics' Series B — but the platform's core posture is to avoid pre-clinical human-therapeutic equity risk.

NovaQuest does not publicly tag exclusionary sectors, but its investment activity concentrates narrowly on human biopharmaceuticals and animal health. The firm is not active in medical devices, healthcare IT, provider services, or generalist buyouts. Within biopharma, its Product Finance model typically steers away from preclinical or discovery-stage programs, focusing instead on assets that have advanced through at least Phase II trials.

NovaQuest runs proprietary pooled funds — Product Finance funds and a Private Equity fund — and deploys capital directly into negotiated biopharma royalty transactions, private equity platform investments, and co-investments. The firm does not operate as a fund-of-funds. Institutional limited partners commit to its blind-pool vehicles, and NovaQuest's investment team originates, underwrites, and manages each position directly.

NovaQuest has executed syndicated equity rounds with other venture and growth investors — for example, the $18 million Gallant Therapeutics Series B included multiple co-investors. The firm also structures royalty transactions that sometimes involve parallel commitments from other specialty-finance firms. However, NovaQuest does not market a formal co-investment program for its limited partners and typically leads or co-leads its own transactions in both the Product Finance and private equity strategies.