European biotech enters 2026 in a strange, almost contradictory mood. The easy-money years are gone, the post-pandemic correction has done its damage, and investors are no longer rewarding science for being exciting alone. Yet the sector is far from frozen. If anything, 2025 showed that European biotech capital has become more selective, more concentrated and, in many ways, more sophisticated.
Recent preclinical data published in Molecular Therapy suggest the company may be closer than ever to answering that question. Its platform did not emerge from a single discovery programme, but from a sequence of acquisitions that brought together the key ingredients for in vivo cell engineering: mRNA payloads, lipid nanoparticle delivery, and targeted immune-cell guidance. Across big pharma, companies are increasingly assembling in vivo CAR-T platforms piece by piece, raising a broader question about whether the next generation of cell therapy will be built in-house, or bought.
Delivering therapeutic genetic material safely to the correct target in the body is one of the big challenges of modern medicine. We talked to David Del Bourgo, CEO of WhiteLab Genomics, about how AI is helping design a new generation of vectors to tackle neurological diseases.
In the evolving landscape of drug discovery and new design, scientists and pharmaceutical innovators continually strive to develop therapies that are both highly selective and clinically effective, while addressing targets previously deemed “undruggable”. In recent years, macrocycles – a class of large, ring-shaped molecules – have emerged as a compelling solution at the crossroads between traditional small molecules and large biologics, offering a blend of high specificity, rich chemical diversity and promising pharmacological profiles.
With the launch of Servier Ventures announced in January and a €200 million commitment to biotech investment, Servier is stepping up its engagement in early-stage innovation in oncology and neurology. European Biotechnology Magazine spoke with Alexis Vandier, Global Head of Servier Ventures, about the fund’s strategy, investment focus, and Europe’s role in the global biotech ecosystem.
The 2026 Professor Wallhäußer Innovation Award was presented during this year’s PharmaCongress & PharmaTechnica 2026 at the end of March. First place went to AstraZeneca for the project “Automated Reading of Agar Plates for Environmental Monitoring with AI”.
According to the WHO, one adult in six globally is affected by infertility, but beyond this statistic, infertility is best understood as a couple’s problem, even when the underlying biology sits with one partner. The way we currently handle infertility issues is more about bypassing biology through procedure, with in vitro fertilisation (IVF) as its backbone. But while IVF is indispensable, success rates still vary, pushing biotech to step in and find new solutions.
For decades, biotech companies were formed around a discovery: a promising biological signal, a novel target, a platform emerging from academic research. Now a different formation model is gaining momentum: venture studios. These entities don’t just fund startups, they assemble them, testing hypotheses, building teams and infrastructure, and only then spinning out companies designed to scale.
Twelve emerging life science startups to showcase enabling technologies at the SLAS European Conference and Exhibition in Vienna, 19-21 May 2026
For years, Portugal sat just outside Europe’s main biotech conversation: scientifically credible, strong in research, but too small, too fragmented and too thinly financed to compete with the established hubs in Switzerland, the UK, France, Germany or the Nordics. That view is becoming harder to defend. Portugal still does not have the scale of Europe’s top biotech markets, but it is building something more durable than a collection of isolated startups.
WhiteLab Genomics
Sevan Habeshian & Christian Heinis et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31428-
Servier
CONCEPT HEIDELBERG GmbH
Svitlana Hulko-freepik.com
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SLAS
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