Garheng Kong

Garheng founded HealthQuest Capital in 2012 to pursue opportunities for investing in fields and locations that he felt were overlooked by many venture and growth investors. A physician and engineer by training, Garheng has 19 years of experience investing in innovative healthcare companies with a long list of successes. He has served on the boards of HealthQuest portfolio companies Alcresta, Avedro, Avizia, Castle Biosciences, CleanSlate, First Aid Shot Therapy, Health Channels, Magnolia Medical, Trice Medical, Venus Concepts, and VirMedica. Some of his notable past successes include IPO’s with Cempra (CEMP), Alimera (ALIM), Applied Genetic Technology Corp. (AGTC), Proteon (PRTO), Histogenics (HSGX) and TransEnterix (TRXC). His investments going on to successful M&A transactions include: Calibra Medical (J&J), Cellective (AstraZeneca), Serenex (Pfizer), Athenix (Bayer), NovaMin (GSK), Aldagen (Cytomedix), Salveo Specialty Pharmacy (United Health), SARCode (Shire), and Spirox (Entellus). Each case was an opportunity where the entrepreneur was “genuine,” the commercial opportunity was clear, and the science was strong. Garheng continues to look for each of these for HealthQuest’s investments. Garheng’s interests and industry footprint are broad as he also serves on the board of LabCorp (LH), Alimera Sciences (ALIM), Histogenics (HSGX), Cempra (CEMP), StrongBridge (SBBP), the Duke University Medical Center, SEBIO, Corporate Chaplains of America and numerous industry groups. Garheng received two undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biological Sciences from Stanford, while on an athletic scholarship. He then earned a MD, PhD and MBA from Duke University, graduating #1 in his class in each instance. His early career included stints at GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey and a medical device start-up, TherOx, before joining Intersouth Partners and then Sofinnova Ventures.