💥New Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing - Apple Tree Life Sciences, Inc.💥
Holy hell, you’ll want to grab a cup of coffee and plunk down somewhere comfy for this one, y’all.
On December 9, 2025, NYC-based Apple Tree Life Sciences, Inc. (“ATLS”), ATP Life Science Ventures, L.P. (the “partnership”), and ATP III GP, Ltd. (the “GP”) filed chapter 11 freefall cases in the District of Delaware (Judge Silverstein), which were followed, on December 15, 2025, by four affiliates — Apertor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Initial Therapeutics, Inc., Marlinspike Therapeutics, Inc., and Red Queen Therapeutics, Inc. (the “filing portcos” and together with ATLS, the partnership, and the GP, the “debtors”) –—hopping in too.
Collectively, the debtors constitute a biotech VC enterprise, with ATLS handling opex and the filing portcos and eleven non-debtor affiliates (together with the filing portcos, the “portcos”) engaging in the actual science. For the filing portcos, their businesses are as follows:
This ain’t your typical biotech BK. Let’s rewind the clock to 2010. That year, first day declarant Dr. Seth Harrison, who through managing director, director, CEO, and president roles is THE guy at the debtors, met Russian oligarch Dr. Dmitry Rybolovlev. This pensive dude …
… who made his fortune in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and privatization of then-state-owned assets. In his case, fertilizer producer and exporter Uralkali.
2010 also happened to be the year that Mr. Rybolovlev sold his stake in Uralkali, earning roundabouts $5b for himself.
You could spend hours reading about this man, his past — including a year spent in jail on murder charges — and what he spent his fortune on (e.g., AS Monaco FC, a multi-hundred-million dollar divorce payout, a €300mm penthouse in Monaco, the Bouvier Affair), and we did, but we don’t have time to delve into all of it here. Instead, let’s focus on the debtors and their non-debtor affiliates (collectively, the “company”).
Per Dr. Harrison, the docs agreed to form a venture capital partnership to a create closely-held pharmaco and “… other successful biotechnology and therapeutic companies that would provide returns along the way.” Dr. Rybolovlev was the bank and initially provided $1.425b of his wealth via capital commitments to fund it, and today, his investment vehicles, Rigmora Biotech Investor One LP and Rigmora Biotech Investor Two LP (collectively, “Rigmora”), own 98% of the interests in the partnership.
Unlike a lot of the biotech dumpster fires we discuss around here, the partnership killed it. By way of example, it founded and subsequently IPO’d Stoke Therapeutics, Inc. ($STOK) and the recently-Novo Nordisk A/S ($NVO)-acquired Akero Therapeutics, Inc., which together provided a 4.9x, $736.1mm return. Other projects fared well too. Here’s Dr. Harrison:
“Total capital of approximately $2.1 billion has been invested in the Portfolio Companies. In the first quarter of 2025, the Partnership’s total value, including distributed and held value, was approximately $6.48 billion … The Partnership has made distributions to the limited partners of $2.28 billion (made up of cash and marketable securities), of which approximately $2.1 billion has been paid to the Rigmora LPs.”
Among those is the non-debtor, cash-flowing portco Braeburn Inc. (“Braeburn”), which created and markets Brixadi, an injectable treatment for opioid use disorder.
Anyway, things hummed along until 2022. Then …
… and, per the debtors, the oligarch-owned Rigmora decided it was time to minimize its ongoing funding obligations to the debtors,* which it accomplished by manufacturing fights, pressuring the company to find alternative sources of funding, and, in late ‘23, seeking to assign LP interests to special purpose vehicles that might not be able to meet Rigmora’s existing capital commitments, which, for obvious reasons, didn’t work for the GP.
Let’s pause for a moment on alternative sources of funding. There really weren’t any. Recall that Mr. Rybolovlev is, well, an oligarch, and “… his prior connections to Russia have made it virtually impossible for the Debtors and other entities connected with him to conduct ordinary course and typical financial transactions.” KYC and the fear of future sanctions** made investors …
Unable to find a good resolution, the debtors limped on for two more years under Rigmora-imposed “… austerity budgets …” and programmatic cuts. Then, in December ‘24, Dr. Harrison sent over new budget requests, to which Rigmora responded with “… onerous diligence requests …” despite having “… no employees with the biopharmaceutical experience that would be needed to evaluate this information,” which apparently marked a big ol’ departure from the prior 10+ years of performance between the company and Rigmora.
To Dr. Harrison, the reason was simple: create delay. So he pivoted to a “needs-must” approach, proposing to work within previously agreed budgets to fund the company and reallocate capital from preclinical companies to those in the clinical (and, therefore, closer to revenue) stage.
Rigmora didn't bite, and on May 15, 2025, Rigmora, through now-CIO Mr. Yuri Bogdanov, sent an email marking the point of no return. We’ll kick it back to Mr. Harrison:
“In the May 15 Email, Mr. Bogdanov described the early-stage companies as dead-ends, and contorted the purpose of my Reallocation Proposal, misstating that I held a similar view that the funding of the early-stage companies would be a waste of the assets of the Partnership. In the May 15 Email, Mr. Bogdanov further declared that the Partnership should cease funding seven portfolio companies, claiming, without any asserted basis, that these companies had ‘no way for a path to commercial success.’ He conditioned any further funding discussions on the GP’s agreement to ‘wind down or liquidate’ these companies. This demand was extraordinary and improper for several reasons, but most importantly, the Rigmora LPs had already approved Budgets for these companies and were contractually obligated to fund them.”
On May 30, 2025, the partnership issued ~$101.1mm in capital calls (inclusive of ~$19.4mm in fees and expenses) to Rigmora under prior-approved budgets, which would provide the portcos roughly six months of operating capital, and simultaneously sued Rigmora in Delaware Chancery court (the “chancery court”) for specific performance.
Rigmora refused to pay or accept service through its counsel, and, on account of the partnership’s existence under the laws of the Cayman Islands:
📍On June 2, 2025, filed a retaliatory writ proceeding in the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands (the “Cayman court”) claiming it had already made capital commitments in excess of what it agreed and owed nothing more,
📍On June 6, 2025, filed a “winding up” petition with the Cayman court, alleging the GP was in breach of its duties to Rigmora and seeking a judicial liquidation of the partnership and which the Cayman court scheduled for trial in January 12, 2026, and
📍On June 20, 2025, obtained an ex parte injunction preventing the debtors from taking any steps to default Rigmora under the partnership agreement or calling additional capital, which remains in place today.
But none of ☝️ stopped the chancery court from moving forward, which it did on an expedited basis. The court held a trial in October ‘25,*** and, on December 5, 2025, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick entered an order requiring Rigmora to pay ~$96.7mm of the ~$101.1mm (95.6%)**** into a segregated account by December 26, 2025 and finding, after applying that payment, Rigmora still had another ~$28.3mm in commitments left.
To keep the company afloat for the past half-year, the partnership did what it had to do: it scaled down operations, terminated ~70% of its employees, and ceded technology back to its source. Notably though, there ain’t a lot of funded debt to tackle in the background. By design, the capital structure is simple; with the exception of Braeburn, which owes $75mm to Hercules Capital, Inc. under a secured term loan, each of the portcos’ secured debt consists solely of amounts owing to the partnership, which along with ATLS and the GP, have no debt of their own.
Anyway, that tees us up for the 45-minute, December 15, 2025 status conference in the debtors’ cases. Did you catch that? Status conference. Two days prior, Rigmora filed an emergency motion to dismiss the cases of the partnership, ATLS, and the GP on the basis none was in financial distress and the petitions were filed to prevent the winding up trial from going forward next month, and presumably confused as hell, Judge Silverstein wanted to get up to speed. Here’s what she (and we) learned:
📍The company might file more debtors in the coming weeks.
📍A financing motion will hit the docket soon enough “… that will show a path to maximize value.”
📍Debtors’ counsel, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP (“Quinn”), is “… working hopefully on a plan and disclosure statement to be filed in the near term to be able to restructure the partnership and the portfolio companies that will hopefully pay every creditor in full and provide a meaningful return to equity.”
But the motion to dismiss? Pushed off to regular notice. As a consolation prize, the court lifted the automatic stay so that a Cayman court pretrial conference could go forward on December 17, the same day as the debtors’ first day hearing …
… which was similarly a mess. Apparently the Cayman conference hadn’t gone as the debtors’ envisioned. Here’s Quinn with the explanation:*****
“When Your Honor heard this on Monday, you granted limited relief from stay to permit a previously scheduled pretrial review to proceed. That was for the January 12th trial on the existing winding up petition… [Y]ou didn’t anticipate the January 12th trial hearing to go forward, given the need to decide which was the motion to dismiss that they had filed. [Rigmora] filed its own version of a [legal brief] that went way beyond what Your Honor permitted. It raised a brand new reason for a winding up petition that has not been filed to go forward… This new ground is because the GP has filed for bankruptcy. As a matter of Cayman Island law, the partnership has dissolved and can be wound up. And they want Your Honor to grant relief from stay so that the Cayman Island court can make that determination.”
Then Rigmora’s counsel, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (“Debevoise”), and Quinn spent a good while arguing about what was or wasn’t a violation of the automatic stay. Here’s a live shot of Judge Silverstein during it:
To make a long story short, we should all expect motion practice on the bankruptcy court docket in the near term: the debtors will seek violations of the automatic stay and Rigmora will seek relief from stay so the Cayman proceedings can go … err… proceed.
The rest of the first-day hearing – you know, the actual relief – was less dramatic, but bumpy all the same. Rigmora objected, naturally, but over the course of the 2.25-hour hearing, the debtors were able to settle all issues on the four motions up … joint administration, creditor matrix, employee wages, and cash management.
Even then, second-day objections are likely, and that hearing will go forward on January 20, 2026 at 2:30pm ET. Before then, everyone will be back in court for Rigmora’s stay relief motion, which ought to hit the docket any day now since it’s still hoping to plow forward in the Cayman court earlier in the month. Either way, a sale of the portcos seems the natural outcome for this company.
The debtors are represented by Quinn (Patricia Tomasco, Andrew Berdon, Rachel Epstein, Rachel Harington, Alain Jaquet, Eric Winston, Razmig Izakelian, Ben Roth) and Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP (Katherine Good, Brett Haywood, Shannon Forshay, Ethan Sulik), Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP (Katherine Good, Brett Haywood, Shannon Forshay, Ethan Sulik) as legal counsel, Murphy & King, PC (Harold Murphy, Andrew Lizotte) as special counsel to debtors Apertor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Initial Therapeutics, Inc., and Marlinspike Therapeutics, Inc., and B. Riley Restructuring Services, LLC (Perry Mandarino) as financial advisor and CRO. Rigmora is represented by Debevoise (Sidney Levinson, Shannon Rose Selden, William Taft V, Zachary Saltzman, Natascha Born, Carl Micarelli, Sebastian Dutz) and Richards, Layton & Finger, P.A. (John Knight, Michael Merchant, Blake Rohrbacher, Daniel Kaprow, Clint Carlisle, Nicholas Franchi) as legal counsel.
*Making an already sh*tty sitch worse, the COVID-boom in biotech investments started to dry up.
**Currently, Mr. Rybolovlev is only subject to Ukranian sanctions.
***The trial was supposed to go forward in September, but the chancery court delayed it a month due to a discovery dispute. During the month, Rigmora filed an emergency motion with the Cayman court seeking the appointment of provisional liquidators to take over the partnership. LOL, the balls. Apparently, the chancery court didn’t like it either and “… criticized [Rigmora’s counsel] Debevoise for misleading her into granting the trial adjournment.” In any event, Rigmora withdrew the emergency motion.
****The ~$4.4mm difference is on account of portco Replicate Bioscience, Inc. The chancery court found that its capital call was subject to an unmet contingency, so Rigmora didn’t need to pony up.
*****A preliminary transcript of the Cayman court’s December 17, 2025 conference is here.
Company Professionals:
Legal: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP (Patricia Tomasco, Andrew Berdon, Rachel Epstein, Rachel Harington, Alain Jaquet, Eric Winston, Razmig Izakelian, Ben Roth) and Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP (Katherine Good, Brett Haywood, Shannon Forshay, Ethan Sulik)
Special Counsel to Apertor Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Initial Therapeutics, Inc., and Marlinspike Therapeutics, Inc.: Murphy & King, PC (Harold Murphy, Andrew Lizotte)
Financial Advisor and CRO: B. Riley Restructuring Services, LLC (Perry Mandarino)
Claims Agent: Verita (Click here for free docket access)
Other Parties in Interest:
Limited Partners: Rigmora Biotech Investor One LP and Rigmora Biotech Investor Two LP
Legal: Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (Sidney Levinson, Shannon Rose Selden, William Taft V, Zachary Saltzman, Natascha Born, Carl Micarelli, Sebastian Dutz) and Richards, Layton & Finger, P.A. (John Knight, Michael Merchant, Blake Rohrbacher, Daniel Kaprow, Clint Carlisle, Nicholas Franchi)