RA Capital Management

How do you handle 3 CDAs per day and close a financing every 2.5 days? You embrace AI like a factory, not an atelier. RA Capital's Counsel Sarah Reed just shared RA Capital's AI-powered approach to legal operations in @ACCDocket - and it's a masterclass in efficiency at scale. https://lnkd.in/dUW-q9MM The challenge: With nearly 200 employees, multiple fund strategies, and being the most active life science investor in 2024, our lean legal team needed to get creative. Their solution: A systematic approach to commoditizing routine work: ✅ Model Documents - We led initiatives creating industry-standard forms for CDAs, PIPEs, and lock-up agreements that reduce negotiation cycles ✅ AI as Junior Associate - Using Claude and ChatGPT for first drafts, legal research, and document review (with human oversight, of course) ✅ Smart Automation - From Smartsheet workflows to Glean's knowledge platform helping interns get up to speed instantly ✅ Old-School Checklists - Because even in the AI era, consistency and completeness matter The key insight: AI isn't about replacing lawyers - it's about amplifying human expertise and eliminating repetitive tasks so legal teams can focus on high-value strategic work. Sarah's approach of "training the AI agent now so it grows with you" mirrors how we think about all our investments - evidence-based, forward-looking, and systematically scalable. Read Sarah's full piece to see how we're helping invent the future of legal operations, one efficiency at a time. #LegalTech #AIinLaw #VentureCapital #LegalOps #Innovation #RACapital

Employee Spotlight: Henry Stusnick Meet Henry. He's an Analyst on RA Capital’s Investment Team, a board observer for four private companies, and a former college soccer goalie who is significantly taller than you’d expect from a Zoom thumbnail. Henry joined in April 2022 as a Junior Associate on RA Capital's TechAtlas research team, diving deep into Orphan Extracellular diseases. Since then, he’s climbed the ranks (Associate → Senior Associate → Investment Team Analyst) by asking big questions, thinking deeply, and never settling for surface-level answers. Henry is most excited by the moment science turns into real-world impact. From ARS’s neffy to Ascendis’s Yorvipath, LENZ’s eye drops, and Verona’s Ohtuvayre - Henry has been part of teams backing a range of therapies that are now changing lives. “The best part of RA Capital? Getting to ask: What do patients actually need? If it exists, we can invest. If it doesn’t, we can invent it.” He’s especially motivated by unmet needs, like how brutal wet AMD injections were for his grandfather, and inspired by the possibility of 'one-and-done' gene therapies like FDMT’s. Outside the lab and market models, you’ll find Henry: 🏀 Cheering on the Celtics 🏖 Relaxing at the beach in Rhode Island 🎶 Listening to Chappell Roan on repeat 🎯 Smart, curious, and impact-driven, with a nerd streak and a competitive edge. That's RA Capital—and that's Henry!

"One of the things I don’t think the general public really sees when they think about innovative pharmaceutical products is the time, effort, and failures that go into them. Because it’s not exciting. It takes forever. It’s not like watching a football game where the ball just goes back and forth on the field. It’s maddeningly slow science. And I think that because people don’t see the struggle, there’s really just sort of a skewed perception of what reality looks like or what good looks like." - Gunnar Esiason If you are looking for a good podcast on an important topic, here's the new "Perspectives" podcast by the Leerink Center for Pharmacoeconomics, featuring a conversation between Gunnar Esiason, MBA, MPH, Head of Patient Engagement and Patient-Centered Innovation at Raven (RA Ventures), RA Capital's healthcare incubator, and the Center's Head, Melanie Whittington, PhD. Links in post, below!

"Health, like disease, is contagious." Great RApport read from health economist Richard Z. Xie! #GCEA #innovation #ValueOfMedicine #Spillover

Looking to join a #Biotech board? Gateway, by RA Capital, uses intelligent gap analysis to match you with boards that need your exact expertise. Here's how it works: Gateway analyzes boards across 24 critical domains, identifies where they lack capabilities, then connects them with executives who are strong in those precise areas. No more guesswork - just smart matches based on real needs. Don't feel like an "expert" yet? Gateway also provides resources to help you strengthen your skills across all governance domains. Gateway is free for the entire #biomedical ecosystem, because better board composition leads to better outcomes for patients. Discover your board match at gateway.racap.com #Biotech #BoardMembers #Executives #Networking

Today is #WorldSclerodermaDay. Over 100,000 Americans live with scleroderma, a chronic autoimmune condition that can affect the skin and internal organs — making everyday life more challenging for many. Many small biotech companies are working on new treatments that could improve care and, one day, lead to cures for scleroderma. And if you’re saving for retirement or paying an insurance premium, you may be helping make that possible. 🎥 This #CommunityQuest video is a thank you from those biotech innovators — for supporting their work to give people with scleroderma more options and more hope. 🔗 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e2vpsxQj #NPLBCommunityQuest #Scleroderma #Biotech #ThankYou #ProtectInnovation #DrugPricing #FixInsurance #AffordableInnovation #BiotechSocialContract

RA Capital portfolio company Capstan Therapeutics has agreed to be acquired by AbbVie. It all started with an "Imagine if": Imagine if you could transiently reprogram a patient’s own T cells – within their own body – to reset the immune system to suppress or even cure autoimmune disease or unleash those T cells against cancer. It was a bold idea, and with that idea, the Capstan Therapeutics journey began. The teams at RA Capital and our Raven (RA Ventures) healthcare incubator have been on the Capstan journey from that initial bold idea to this acquisition, and we will continue on that journey as Capstan's technology continues to evolve and progress, now with AbbVie. Our goal remains the same: see if Capstan's technology can help treat and maybe even cure patients suffering from a range of autoimmune diseases and potentially even other kinds of indications. We are proud of what Capstan has accomplished thus far, and excited to see where their ongoing efforts might lead. Seeing medicines make a difference for patients – which is to say all of us and the people we care about – drives us in our careers and gives meaning to our work. The acquisition of Capstan Therapeutics by Abbvie creates more opportunities to create more medicines that make a difference, and we couldn't be more proud and excited! #Biotech #BiomedicalInnovation #RACapital #Raven #AbbVie #autoimmune

🔍 Strategic, Steady, and Relentlessly Curious — Meet Laura Tadvalkar As Managing Director on our Venture Team, Laura Tadvalkar embodies what we value most at RA Capital: discipline, deep domain expertise, and unwavering commitment to purposeful impact. Laura joined us five years ago—just as the world went remote—and dove right in. Since then, she’s helped build ventures across the spectrum, from foundational newcos to clinical-stage spinouts, always with a long view and a sharp lens. 🎯 What drives her? “Helping advance therapeutics with real potential to change lives. The recent data from Cidara is a great example—few believed a ~75% protective flu prophylactic was possible, but this is exactly the kind of science we get excited about.” 🔬 What keeps her engaged? “The constant push to evolve—trying new approaches, taking bold but informed bets, and being surrounded by people who are both brilliant and grounded.” Laura is a trusted partner to management teams, known for her sound judgment and high-conviction execution. And when she’s not thinking about novel therapeutics, she’s fully immersed in all things trains, cars, and parks with her 3-year-old and 6-month-old sons. Fun fact: Laura was a competitive long-distance swimmer through college. Her endurance, both in the pool and in venture building, continues to shape the way we work: sharp, steady, and always looking ahead. RA Capital is proud to be anchored in process—not headlines—and fueled by people like Laura who help us turn insight into durable, long-term value. #RACapitalManagement #TeamRA #LongTermValue #BiotechInvesting #VentureCapital #PatientImpact #TrustedStewards #WomenInScience #FluPrevention

3.8 million Americans are living with breast cancer. It’s the most common cancer among women, and 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes. More than 40,000 women are expected to die from breast cancer this year in the United States. Many small biotech companies are working to change those numbers, and they’re not doing it alone. If you are saving for retirement, or paying insurance premiums, you are helping to fuel the next generation of breast cancer treatments. 🎥 This Community Quest video is a heartfelt “thank you” to everyone helping make tomorrow’s better breast cancer medicines possible, from some of the biotech innovators working to invent them. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eRFMZMGD #CommunityQuest #BreastCancer #Biotech #ThankYou #ProtectInnovation #DrugPricing #FixInsurance #FutureOfHealth

🌍 What We Eat Shapes the Planet Global agriculture is so large and interconnected that even small changes can have outsized effects. The third vignette in our Agriculture Map series examines the often surprising links between dietary shifts and agricultural impacts. Find it here: https://bit.ly/45jUMHH The Trans Fats Swap That Ate Michigan Remember trans fats? The food industry largely replaced them with palm oils due to health risks. This required clearing a Michigan-sized chunk of rainforest to support an 8X surge in palm oil production. A win for human health, but a loss for the planet. We're witnessing another dietary shift: the rapid adoption of GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and obesity. This has already impacted obesity rates in countries like the US but it has also changed demand for certain foods in more subtle ways, disrupting food production and retail. As a thought experiment: imagine everyone with obesity used these drugs. Global food consumption could drop ~3%. The environmental impact of that seemingly modest number would be: ✅ A 180M metric tons reduction in GHG emissions ✅ A land area larger than India freed up from food production ✅ Water savings equal to the Missouri River’s annual flow (all 2,341 miles of it!) But it’s not just what and how much we eat, it’s also about the food that’s never eaten at all: 30% of all food produced annually is lost or wasted. Reducing that amount to 20% (a one-third reduction in waste) has an equal or greater impact on food production, land, and water use as the GLP-1 thought experiment above, plus it would reduce methane emissions from rotting food in landfills. The takeaway: Dietary shifts – intentional or not – have massive environmental consequences. Explore the full Agriculture Map released last month to learn more about other key opportunities in agriculture: https://bit.ly/4mtAJfW #GLP1 #FoodSystems #Sustainability #ClimateAction #Agriculture #PlanetaryHealth