RTW Foundation

“The Foundation’s mission is to power rare disease research, medical innovation, and humanitarian collaborations to improve the health of underserved communities."

RTW Investments (RTW) is a leading biopharma and healthcare investment firm with over $6B in assets under management (AUM). The firm makes investments anywhere across a company's life cycle, from pre-clinical to commercial stage assets, and focuses on medical and scientific corporations looking to bring innovative products to patients.

Since its founding by Dr. Roderick Wong in 2009, RTW has developed an expertise in several medical technology and disease areas through a comprehensive study of both the medical and academic spaces as well as the employment of subject matter experts within its staff. By focusing its energies on select technology platforms – such as gene therapy, RNA, antibodies and proteins – and disease areas – including cancer, neurology, cardiovascular disease and other rare diseases – RTW believes they can add more value to entrepreneurs and scientists on a daily basis.

With a desire to further the philanthropic mission of RTW Investments, the RTW Charitable Foundation (RTWCF) was established in 2018 with a plan to prioritize patients affected by debilitating diseases, this represents an extension of the investment firm mission to make a positive impact on those affected by rare diseases. The Foundation’s research process helps RTW to identify important causes of human suffering and introduces the firm to individuals and organizations trying to make a difference. Through its grantmaking activities, RTWCF aims to foster the development of medicines which can be characterized as either early stage therapeutic technologies and/or medicines designed to treat diseases with a high unmet need and limited commercial potential. RTWCF’s support goes beyond the financial component as the Foundation is able to leverage the significant institutional knowledge of RTW Investments and its staff in both drug development and company building. Unlike other financially focused entities, the Foundation is specifically directed to prioritize benefit to patients over financial reward and recognizes that only part of the struggle to relieve patients’ suffering takes place in laboratories.

Many of the diseases targeted by RTWCF affect not only patients themselves, but also their families. RTWCF aims to aid these families by providing information materials on the diseases and coordinating assistance as needed; advocating for patients whose voices might not otherwise be heard; and raising public awareness at a local and national level.