Raj is a partner in Ropes & Gray’s venture capital and emerging companies, intellectual property transactions, and life sciences licensing groups and represents some of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies, emerging life sciences companies, and venture capital and growth equity investors in a broad range of matters, including startup formation matters, minority equity investments, strategic alliances, licenses, collaborations, and other commercial agreements.
Clients trust Raj to offer strategic advice and corporate legal counseling to management teams, boards, and investors, and to structure and lead complex deals that have enabled some of the best-known names in life sciences accelerate research, advance product development, and access new markets.
Experience
Representative Venture Capital / Emerging Company Equity Financing Matters
- Represented Sanofi in its participation in AgomAb Therapeutics’ $89 million Series D financing.
- Represented AvenCell Therapeutics in connection with its $112 million Series B financing, led by Novo Holdings.
- Represented Basecamp Research in connection with its $60 million Series B financing.
- Represented Bain Capital Life Sciences in several transactions, including in connection with its role as a lead investor in an over $200 million strategic growth transaction centered on Serán Bioscience.
- Represented Nocion Therapeutics in connection with its $62 million Series B financing.
- Represented Haveli Investments as it led the equity financing for Cohesity’s acquisition of Veritas’ data protection business to form an AI-powered data security and data management company valued at approximately $7 billion.
- Represented a portfolio company of a leading investment firm in connection with its conversion into an LLC ‘hub and spoke’ structure along side its Series A equity financing.
- Represented Amae Health in connection with its Series A financing.
- Represented SmartLabs in its $250 million Series B financing.
- Represented Blackstone Life Sciences in connection with its role as lead investor in AvenCell Therapeutics’ Series A financing.
Representative Life Sciences Licenses, Collaborations, and Commercial Agreements
- Represented Apollo Therapeutics in a licensing agreement with Sunshine Lake Pharma Co., a member of China’s HEC Group, pursuant to which Apollo Therapeutics will receive exclusive ex-China rights to a clinical-stage FGF21/GLP-1 dual receptor agonist.
- Represented Erasca in an exclusive license agreement for a pre-clinical RAS mutation targeting program with a potent oral tumor inhibitor.
- Represented Pfizer in connection with its strategic collaboration with Flagship Pioneering to create a new pipeline of innovative medicines.
- Represented Pfizer in connection with its $1.24 billion dollar ex-U.S. strategic collaboration agreement with Biohaven to commercialize rimegepant.
- Represented National Resilience in a strategic alliance with bluebird bio to accelerate the research, development and delivery of cell therapies.
- Represented Blackstone Life Sciences in its combination with Intellia Therapeutics and Cellex Cell Professionals GmbH to create a new CAR-T platform company to develop cell therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
- Represented Foghorn Therapeutics in its co-development and co-commercialization agreement with Loxo Oncology at Lilly.
- Represents the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in connection with licenses and collaborations, including licenses for CRISPR/Cas9, strategic alliances, and equity matters.