The New Leaf Ventures (NLV) team has been built over a decade, originating within Sprout Group, the venture capital affiliate of Credit Suisse First Boston. Sprout Group was formed in 1969 and has historically been one of the leading venture capital firms in the country. The team started to invest in healthcare technology in 1993 and since then, has become a leading venture investor in that sector. In 2005, the entire healthcare technology team of Sprout spun out into NLV. This team continues to manage the healthcare technology portfolio of the Sprout funds in 2005, the team closed on its first directly-managed fund, New Leaf Ventures I, L.P., a $310 million healthcare technology-dedicated fund. In 2007, the team closed on its second fund, New Leaf Ventures II, L.P., a fund also dedicated to healthcare technology, which was capitalized with $450 million of limited partner commitments.

Spanning five different Sprout funds, the NLV team has invested over $1 billion in healthcare technology companies, representing a range of opportunities, including investments in ten public companies and 37 companies that were startups or where we were amonth the first venture investors. The NLV team has helped to establish or nurture such companies as Adeza Biomedical, Allos Therapeutics, Aradigm Corporation, Aspreva Pharmaceuticals, Cephalon, Cerexa, CombiChem, Epicor Medical, ePocrates, Ilypsa,  NxStage Medical, Pathology Partners, Sapient Health Networks (WebMD) and Sequana Therapeutics. The team also led recapitalizations of established companies such as ISTA Pharmaceuticals and Sirna Therapeutics.

Both New Leaf Ventures I and New Leaf Ventures II are capitalized primarily by commitments from large corporate and public sector pension funds, endowments, and other private investors -- many of whom have invested with the NLV team through investments in previous Sprout funds.