Garrett Vygantas

Managing Partner at Riverine Ventures

Speaker

Garrett Vygantas, MD, MBA is Founder & Managing Partner of Riverine Ventures, a life science and healthcare dedicated venture capital firm. Trained as a physician and an experienced entrepreneur, Garrett provides strategic direction and valuable clinical and commercial networks as a Board Member or Advisor to Adventris Pharma, AEye Health, ArtiSight, CellFE, Ceria Therapeutics, Corsair Pharma, Eliksa Therapeutics, HealthBridge, Inflammatix, KeifeRx, Mediphage and Pieces Technologies.

His previous investments include Aptinyx (NASDAQ: APTX), Circularis (acq. by Ginkgo Bio, NYSE: DNA), Doctor on Demand (acq. by Grand Rounds), Endotronix, Exo Imaging, Health Scholars, Gauss Surgical (acq. by Stryker, NYSE: SYK), Level Ex (acq. by Brainlab), MediBeacon, Paradigm Cancer Diagnostics (acq. by Exact Sciences, NASDAQ: EXAS), Rayze Bio (acq. by Bristol Myers Squibb, NYSE: BMY), SilverCloud (acq. by AmWell, NYSE: AMWL), Spect, Stem (NYSE: STEM) and Visibly.

With over 20 years, Garrett’s expertise spans across biopharma, life sciences, healthcare, medtech and digital health investing and operations. Before founding Riverine Ventures, he has invested on behalf of The 4100 Group, OSF Healthcare, Jump Capital and Burrill & Co. As an operator, he served as Founding CEO of TherOptix, NewBridge Pharmaceuticals and Mitre Medical and Chief Business Officer of Corsair Pharma. At NewBridge, he and his team raised over $60M in financing and created $470M in nominal value.

Earlier in his career Garrett helped launch Lucentis at Genentech and worked on the healthcare investment banking team at Cowen & Company. He earned his MD /MBA degree from Georgetown University and completed his residency at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Kauffman Fellow and Mentor at the Center for Venture Education and has served on numerous not-for-profit Boards.