Todd Foley

Todd Foley is a Managing Director at MPM BioImpact (the successor to MPM Capital), one of the largest dedicated life-sciences investment firms. He joined MPM's Boston office in 1999 and has spent more than two decades investing in, incubating, and building biotechnology companies. Today he invests MPM's main funds and manages the MPM–Novartis Strategic Funds, a long-running strategic partnership between the firm and Novartis.

Before entering venture capital, Foley built a career on the operating and advisory side of the life-sciences industry. He worked in business development at Genentech (now part of Roche) and in management consulting at Arthur D. Little. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Foley is deeply involved in company creation. He is a co-founder of Aktis Oncology (2020, with Brian Goodman and Patrick Baeuerle) and currently serves as Chairman of the boards of Aktis Oncology, ashibio, and Crossbow Therapeutics, and as a director of AstronauTx, Firefly Biologics, and Seawolf Therapeutics. His track record includes chairing/serving on boards through two of the sector's most notable exits: Semma Therapeutics — a curative diabetes cell-therapy company co-founded by MPM with Harvard's Doug Melton, acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals for $950M in 2019 — and Selexys Pharmaceuticals, which he guided to a $665M acquisition by Novartis in 2016 (its drug later launched as Adakveo for sickle cell disease).

• Invests almost exclusively in biotechnology and therapeutics, emphasizing science that can "transform the lives and outcomes of patients suffering from disease" (MPM BioImpact framing).
• Operates through an active company-creation model — MPM uses Entrepreneur Partners and in-house teams to found and build companies, so Foley often comes in at inception rather than as a passive check-writer.
• Backs platform-driven, differentiated science across modalities: cell therapy (Semma), targeted radiopharmaceuticals (Aktis), oncology (Crossbow), and rare/serious disease (ashibio, AstronauTx).
• Comfortable across the full lifecycle — from pre-seed/company formation through public markets — given MPM's venture, impact, and public-equities vehicles.
• Values long-horizon, hands-on board leadership, frequently serving as Chairman and steering companies toward major M&A or IPO outcomes.