# Amir Nashat

> Amir Nashat is a Series A investor at Polaris Partners (Boston) backing Biotechnology and Medical. See 29 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Polaris Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/polaris-partners)
- Location: Boston, United States
- Total investments: 29
- Last investment: Jan 2025
- Lead investor: 21%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/amir-nashat/0/a3/73b
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/VCAmir
- Website: https://x.com/VCAmir

Amir Nashat is a Managing Partner in Polaris’ Boston office. Amir joined Polaris in 2002 and focuses on investments in healthcare. Amir currently represents Polaris as a Member of the Board of Directors at AgBiome, aTyr Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LIFE), BIND Therapeutics (NASDAQ: BIND), Fate Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FATE), Metacrine, PromediorPharmaceuticals, Scholar Rock, Selecta Biosciences, and Syros Pharmaceuticals. Additionally, Amir has served as a Member of the Board of Directors at Adnexus Therapeutics (Bristol Myers Squibb), Athenix Corporation (Bayer), Avila Therapeutics (Celgene), Living Proof, Pervasis Therapeutics (Shire Pharmaceuticals), Receptos (Celgene) and Sun Catalytix (Lockheed Martin). At Living Proof and Sun Catalytix, Amir served as the company’s initial Chief Executive Officer. Amir serves on the Partners Innovation Fund and is a Catalyst of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT. Amir previously served on the Board of the New England Venture Capital Association. Amir has been named to the Forbes Midas List of “Top 100 Venture Capitalists.” Prior to joining Polaris, Amir completed his Ph.D. as a Hertz Fellow in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a minor in Biology under the guidance of Dr. Robert Langer. Amir also earned both his M.S. degree and B.S. degree in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Biotechnology | 11 | 38% |
| Medical | 6 | 21% |
| Health Care | 5 | 17% |
| Therapeutics | 5 | 17% |
| Biopharma | 3 | 10% |

19 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 8 | 28% |
| Series C | 6 | 21% |
| Series B | 5 | 17% |
| Series E | 3 | 10% |
| Funding Round | 2 | 7% |

9 stages tracked in total.

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Soufflé Therapeutics | Soufflé Therapeutics is a biotechnology company specializing in the development of nucleic acid medicines designed for precise delivery and targeting of disease-causing cells. The company's mission is to create potent, precise, and safe medicines that can be tailored for a broad range of diseases by leveraging breakthroughs in genetic medicineand drug delivery technology. | $200M | Series A | Jan 01, 2025 |  |
| Matter Neuroscience | Over millions and millions of years, a collection of reward systems | $26M | Seed | Feb 27, 2024 |  |
| Freenome | Freenome is a biotechnology company developing blood tests for early cancer detection to improve access to routine screening. | $254M | Series E | Feb 15, 2024 |  |
| Freenome | Freenome is a biotechnology company developing blood tests for early cancer detection to improve access to routine screening. | $254M |  | Feb 15, 2024 |  |
| Freenome | Freenome is a biotechnology company developing blood tests for early cancer detection to improve access to routine screening. | $254M | Series F | Feb 15, 2024 |  |
| Jnana Therapeutics | Jnana Therapeutics is a biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing medicines that improve patient lives. Utilizing its RAPID platform, the firm accelerates the identification of therapeutic targets and the creation of small molecule therapies for various diseases. Jnana aims to enhance drug discovery efficiency through advancedchemoproteomics techniques, addressing unmet medical needs. | $107M | Series C | Nov 15, 2022 |  |
| Scholar Rock | Scholar Rock, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative medicines for the treatment of serious diseases in which signaling by protein growth factors plays a fundamental role. Our newly elucidated understanding of the molecular mechanisms of growth factor activation enabled us to develop a proprietaryplatform for the discovery and development of monoclonal antibodies that locally and selectively target these signaling proteins at the cellular level. We believe this approach, acting in the disease microenvironment, avoids the historical challenges associated with inhibiting growth factors for therapeutic effect. We believe our focus on biologically validated growth factors may facilitate a more efficient development path. We are advancing our lead product candidate, SRK-015, a selective first-in-class inhibitor of the activation of the growth factor myostatin in skeletal muscle, into clinical development for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. We expect to initiate a Phase 1 clinical trial in the second quarter of 2018. Utilizing our proprietary platform, we are also creating a pipeline of novel product candidates with the potential to transform the lives of patients suffering from a wide range of serious diseases, including other neuromuscular disorders, cancer, fibrosis and anemia. | $205M | Post-IPO Equity | Jun 17, 2022 |  |
| Dewpoint Therapeutics | Dewpoint Therapeutics is a biotech company which develop a drug platform that targets biomolecular condensates. | $150M | Series C | Feb 03, 2022 |  |
| Freenome | Freenome is a biotechnology company developing blood tests for early cancer detection to improve access to routine screening. | $300M | Series D | Dec 07, 2021 |  |
| Kojin Therapeutics | Founded by Stuart Schreiber, Benjamin Cravatt, Stephanie Dougan, and Vasanthi Viswanathan, Kojin is accelerating a drug discovery platform that connects complex cell states to known biochemical processes such as ferroptosis, or iron-dependent cell death, and enables the development of selective therapies for a broad range of hard-to-treat diseases.The company’s investors include Polaris Partners, Newpath Partners, Cathay Health, Leaps by Bayer, AbbVie Inc., Eventide Asset Management, Alexandria, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute venture firm, Binney Street Capital. | $60M | Series A | Jun 09, 2021 |  |

10 of 29 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [S32](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/section-32) — VC Fund, 9 deals together
- [ARCH Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/arch-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 7 deals together
- [RA Capital Management](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ra-capital-management) — VC Fund, 7 deals together
- [Bain Capital Life Sciences](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bain-capital-life-sciences) — VC Fund, 6 deals together
- [EcoR1 Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ecor1-capital) — VC Fund, 6 deals together
- [Leaps by Bayer](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/leaps-by-bayer) — VC Fund, 5 deals together

## About Polaris Partners

VC Fund · Boston, United States

Polaris Partners invests in healthcare and biotechnology companies. Their healthcare portfolio companies' care delivery models include digital health, consumer-centric businesses, patient-provider solutions, data science, and analytics. Their life sciences and biotechnology portfolio companies focus on molecules and platforms, therapeutics,and genomics.

5 contacts available at Polaris Partners.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Isaac Ciechanover | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/isaac-ciechanover |
| Sharif Vakili | Associate | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sharif-vakili |
| Alan Crane | Partner and Entrepreneur | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alan-crane |
| Alexandra Cantley | Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alexandra-cantley-1374 |
| Amir Nashat | Managing Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/amir-nashat |

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## FAQ

### What does Amir Nashat invest in?

Amir Nashat invests primarily in Biotechnology, Medical and Health Care startups, most often at Series A and Series C stage. Most of the 29 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Amir Nashat last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Amir Nashat closed in Jan 2025. Shizune tracks 29 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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