Following Fresenius’ launch of a €200 million healthcare venture fund in July, we invited Thomas Thestrup, managing director of Fresenius Ventures, to share his perspective in the Autumn issue of European Biotechnology. His argument: Europe has the innovation and the corporate investment expertise to compete globally, but needs more capital from its own healthcare companies to prevent the value created by European science from moving elsewhere. Here’s what he had to say:
Dutch life sciences investor Forbion has raised €2.3 billion across two new funds to finance about 30 biotech companies, setting a fundraising record for the firm.
AI has transformed drug discovery, but the “AI biotech” label has become increasingly misleading. Kurma Partners proposes an investment framework that distinguishes three fundamentally different models — each building a different asset, creating value in a different way and requiring a different investment lens.
German healthcare group Fresenius has created a corporate venture capital unit that plans to invest more than €200 million in healthcare startups over the next five years.
Kos Biotechnology Partners has raised US$123m (€106m) for its inaugural global life sciences fund, marking a notable step for Greece’s still young biotechnology financing ecosystem.
Perceptic has raised a $12 million (€10.3 million) seed round to advance an AI operating system used by companies including CSL.
Isomorphic Labs has raised $2.1 billion (€1.8 billion) to further develop its artificial intelligence engine and advance drugs discovered using the platform.
Infex Therapeutics has raised £4.3 million (€4.95 million) to advance an anti-infective pipeline led by a midphase drug candidate.
Scarlet Therapeutics has raised £3.2 million (€3.7 million) to take therapies based on red blood cells (RBCs) to in vivo proof of concept, building on evidence that natural and lab-grown cells have comparable half-lives.
Cytospire Therapeutics has raised a £61 million (€71 million) Series A round, positioning the British biotech to advance pan-gamma-delta T-cell engagers (TCEs) into cancer clinical trials.