Alta Partners www.altapartners.com

Founded: 1996 by four of the senior partners of Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.

Headquarters: San Francisco.

Life Science Funds: Alta BioPharma Partners III and Alta California Partners IV.

Size: $475M combined in commitments.

Capital Under Management: $1.5B

Key Execs: Jean Deleage, managing director, is joined by the firms life sciences investment professionals Farah Champsi, Alison de Bord, Jean Deleage, Ed Hurwitz, Dan Janney, David Mack, Alix Marduel, Guy Nohra, Ed Penhoet, and Katya Smirnyagina.

Previous Funds: Alta now manages seven venture funds. The most recent are Alta BioPharma Partners, which closed in 2001 at $212M, and Alta California Partners III, which closed in 2000 at $230M.

Focus: The new Alta funds will be invested exclusively in life science companies, ranging from startups to advanced clinical stage companies. Primarily, Alta will focus on U.S. companies, but will also invest in select companies in Canada and Europe.

Investments: From last October through the end of March, Alta has had seven of its portfolio companies launch IPOs: Acuspehere, Corgentech, Cutera, Dynavax Technologies, EyeTech Pharmaceuticals, Renovis and Xcyte Therapies. Three others are in registration: Cytokinetics, CoTherix and Corcept Therapeutics. Memory Pharmaceuticals in late March postponed its IPO, but could price in April.

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers/Thomson Venture Economics/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Survey; and original research.