David Allison

David Allison, PhD, is a Managing Director at Westlake Village BioPartners, a life-sciences venture firm focused on incubating and building companies to advance transformative treatments. He joined Westlake as a Managing Director in 2023 after more than six years at 5AM Ventures in San Francisco, where he rose from Principal to Partner (he joined 5AM in 2016 and was promoted to Partner in 2018). He brings over 15 years of healthcare investing, company formation, and translational research experience.

Before 5AM Ventures, Allison served on the investment teams at Versant Ventures, Split Rock Partners, and PTV Healthcare Capital, giving him a long track record across multiple life-sciences venture platforms. His career has consistently centered on forming and financing early-stage therapeutics and medical-technology companies, many of which have gone on to public offerings and acquisitions.

Allison earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Rice University and a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering (with honors) from the University of Iowa. In April 2025, he was named the 15th member of the external advisory board of the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, a program that translates academic research from Rice into biotech startups — a role he described as "especially meaningful" as a Rice alumnus.

• Invests at the earliest stages of life-sciences company creation — company formation, seed, and Series A — often building companies around translational academic science rather than backing later, de-risked rounds.
• Concentrated on therapeutics and healthcare/biotech, spanning endocrine, neuro, metabolic/liver, and medical-device areas based on his portfolio history (e.g., Crinetics, Impel, Inipharm, Magnetic Insight).
• At Westlake, the model favors hands-on incubation: pairing entrepreneurs and technologies, seeding with an initial check, and taking companies from formation to Series A over roughly 9–12 months.
• On his advisory work he framed the goal as "accelerating groundbreaking science into real-world treatments" and "redefining how academic innovation translates into biotech success" — a clear signal he backs academically rooted, translational founding teams.