The Doris Duke Foundation’s long biotechnology bet is paying off after a five-year winter.
The $2.2 billion portfolio has steadily expanded its exposure to health and life sciences as part of a broader effort to invest in areas tied to the foundation’s priorities. And this yearslong push to align the New York-based charitable organization’s endowment with its mission is starting to show results as biotech rebounds.
“We have increased our biotech exposure over time, both on the private side and in the public side,” said Jennifer Katz, director of investments for the foundation, adding that “it has started to recover there and do well for us.”
Although the performance of private holdings remains too early to evaluate, Doris Duke’s public biotech assets soared in value by about 40 percent over the course of 2025 following a prolonged downturn in the sector. By comparison, the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index ended the year up 30.5 percent.
About 4 percent of the foundation’s portfolio is in biotech stocks and hedge funds.
This long biotech play is part of Doris Duke’s mission-aligned investing program, which targets opportunities across nature, arts and culture, and health and wellbeing to build a more creative, equitable, and sustainable world. Launched in 2019 to invest up to 10 percent of the endowment over 10 years, it shifted in 2024 to an integrated impact approach focused on profitable investments that also further the foundation’s mission.
“We can do a lot in our medical research mission,” said Katz, who also leads the foundation’s mission-aligned activities.
In the Doldrums
Biotech stocks have “been in the doldrums” since around 2021, according to Leena Bhutta, Doris Duke’s chief investment officer. In addition to being hit by high interest rates, the sector saw a market correction after the post-pandemic investment frenzy left the sector overcrowded and overvalued. The sector also faced uncertainty over the Trump administration’s healthcare policy and the drug approval process.
“It's been a bit of a winter,” Bhutta said.
Biopharma funds were particularly volatile in the first half of 2025, driven in part by the administration’s anti-vaccine sentiment and fears that the FDA will be slow to approve any new drugs. But interest rate cuts and accelerating M&A activity lifted the sector out of its multiyear slump and led life sciences and biopharma stocks to rally in the second half of last year.
As of February 23, the index is up 5 percent year-to-date and up nearly 32 percent over the trailing 12 months.
Despite biotech delivering tepid returns for years — stocks fell more than 36 percent from their post-covid peak in September 2021 to their nadir in June 2022 — the foundation has maintained its conviction in the sector’s long-term growth trajectory.
“There's a lot of value in these companies,” and a lot of science behind them, Bhutta said. They also have large markets.
Furthering the Foundation’s Mission
Doris Duke has allocated 12 percent of its portfolio to the mission-aligned investing program. Those investments include environmentally focused strategies, where Katz has seen the big growth opportunity shift over the past couple of years from climate mitigation technologies to climate adaptation.
“It's actually a good thing that the financial reality is shaping the strategies, because there's a lot of different ways you can have impact,” Katz said.
The foundation has a return target of 8 percent to achieve its required payout rate of 5 percent. To ensure the endowment has enough liquidity, the investment team maintains a robust fixed income portfolio to provide stability when longer-term investments go through fallow cycles.
“We're managing the private book in a way where we don't run into liquidity issues,” Bhutta said. “And it helps that we have a long-term private portfolio that's cash flow generative.”
