Triathlon Medical Ventures, with offices downtown, said Monday it has completed the money-raising phase of a fund that will invest in life science companies. It launched the fund in March 2003 with the goal of raising $60 million, only to wind up with $96 million.

"We had a lot of interest in the fund," said Dr. John Rice, one of Triathlon's three partners. "We were oversubscribed."

Triathlon gathered money from institutional investment sources including the University of Cincinnati, the University of Louisville, Case Western Reserve University, the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation and the Tri-State Growth Fund in Cincinnati.

Most of the money, however, came in the form of a matching grant from the Small Business Administration, Rice said. For each dollar raised privately, he said, the fund received nearly $2 from the government's Small Business Investment Corp., which becomes a Triathlon limited partner.

At a rate of $500,000 to $4 million for each initial and subsequent investment, Triathlon expects to invest the $96 million in about 20 companies over the next five years. It will scour the Midwest for early-stage companies, and the entire nation for companies in expansion mode.

"We have a couple of prospective investments that are in due diligence now," Rice said. "We expect to make several investments by the end of the year."

Why the Midwest? "There's a lot of innovation here that you can measure in research dollars and patent activity, but the capital has not been available," Rice said.

Rice and fellow Triathlon partners Dennis Costello and Suzette Dutch had worked for Senmed Medical Ventures in Cincinnati, the investment unit of Newport-based Sencorp. Rice said Senmed invested in more than 20 companies across the nation, a couple of which are approaching $100 million in annual revenue.

Triathlon plans to open offices in Kentucky, Indiana and St. Louis.

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E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com