NeoSci Ventures Reaches S$70M First Close for Biotech Fund

A biotech company needs an organization around its science before an institutional investor has much of a business to assess. NeoSci Ventures, known as NSV, is making that formation work part of its investment proposition, with its team able to join the companies it helps create as founders, directors or executives.

NSV reached a S$70M first close for its inaugural institutional venture fund, announced on November 3, 2026. The firm operates across Singapore, Taiwan and the US, with founding managing partner Daphne Teo and founding chief scientist Timothy Lu leading a strategy spanning therapeutics and technologies involving biology, AI, data and scientific tools.

The first close gives outside investors a stake in that company-building approach. For scientists and prospective partners, the consequential detail is how closely the investor may participate in choosing a team, shaping a company and directing the work that follows a promising discovery.

What NSV's first close finances

DealStreetAsia's November 3 report identifies Taiwan's National Development Fund, EDBI, Catcher Technology and Crescendas Group among the limited partners. The announced S$70M is denominated in Singapore dollars and represents a first close. A final target, final-close timetable and individual LP commitments were not disclosed in the sources reviewed.

The distinction matters because NSV is raising a fund that invests in companies. The sum is neither financing for one therapeutic program nor a statement of how much money has reached portfolio businesses. Investors evaluating the announcement need to keep the manager, its vehicle and each operating company separate, even when the same people help build all three relationships.

The fund has invested in 2 companies, according to DealStreetAsia. Protuoso is the named investment; the second business was not identified. NSV's official portfolio lists Protuoso Bio separately from companies associated with the team's earlier work, preserving an important boundary between a new fund's holdings and the experience its managers bring to the job.

That separation gives the debut vehicle a clearer starting point. Experienced company builders can carry judgment, relationships and operating habits into a new fund, while its investment record still has to develop through the businesses receiving its capital. LP backing gives the strategy resources and responsibilities before there is a mature portfolio to measure.

Company formation changes the investor's assignment

NSV's founders describe an approach that starts with identifying science and bringing together the people needed to develop it. In The Business Times' interviews with Teo and Lu, the firm outlined plans to back up to 12 biotechnology companies globally. Its involvement can include founder, board and executive positions during a company's early years.

That is a substantial assignment to accept alongside an investment. A builder participates in decisions about the organization carrying the research, including the people who will make its scientific and commercial choices. Capital allocation and management attention become connected: every additional company asks something of the people expected to help assemble and guide it.

The combination of financial and scientific leadership helps explain NSV's chosen model. The firm's official team page describes Teo's company-building and investment-banking background, and Lu's work in synthetic biology and biotechnology entrepreneurship. Those are relevant capabilities for a business that expects to form companies, rather than simply encounter them after a team and development plan are already in place.

The practical question for a scientist considering NSV is therefore unusually concrete: which parts of building the company will its team undertake? Founder involvement, recruitment, governance and scientific assessment can mean different working relationships. NSV's model makes those responsibilities part of the investment conversation early, when an organization is still deciding how to turn its research into a development program.

Protuoso puts the model inside an operating company

Protuoso Bio supplies a useful example of what sits underneath the fund's biotechnology mandate. The company describes combining AI-driven protein engineering, computational protein design and synthetic biology to develop multifunctional protein architectures called MUXBODIES. Its stated structure pairs a central protein-engineering hub with development work on individual assets.

A shared engineering capability creates an organizational question alongside the scientific one. The company has to decide how work at the center supports distinct therapeutic programs, and where each program needs its own development attention. The appeal of a common platform lies partly in that relationship between reusable capability and specific medicines, while any claim about clinical efficacy still requires the relevant development evidence.

Protuoso identifies cardiometabolic biologics and immune-cell engagers among its asset areas. Those company descriptions establish the intended work, rather than a clinical result or regulatory approval. For NSV, having an investment with a defined engineering approach makes the broader company-building proposition easier to examine without pretending the first-close announcement answers questions about therapeutic performance.

The geography adds another dimension to that work. TNGlobal's report of NSV's statement describes a strategy drawing on US and Asian networks, including therapeutic opportunities emerging from Asia. Scientific sourcing, company formation and relationships with pharmaceutical groups can therefore involve different institutions and markets before a program reaches a commercial negotiation.

For the teams working with NSV, those connections will matter through the decisions attached to individual programs. Teo and Lu now have an institutional fund behind the work of assembling companies around science; each new organization will give that mandate its own people, development priorities and demands on the builders' time.