Sofinnova SARL

European life sciences investor Sofinnova Partners disclosed a €165 million acceleration fund on Tuesday to back early-stage science in Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Denmark. The fund, Biovelocita II, is 10 times the size of the first Biovelocita fund, which started in 2015 and focused on Italy, Sofinnova Partners managing partner Graziano Seghezzi told Endpoints News . That first effort helped create Enthera Pharmaceuticals, a Milan-based biotech working on inflammatory diseases that gained AbbVie’s support in a 2020 Series A . Other early-stage biotech investors have disclosed new funds in the past 18 months to support European startups, including Asabys Partners, Earlybird Health and XGEN Venture. Biovelocita II comes with financial support from limited partners including Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer Ventures. The €165 million is part of the broader €1.2 billion pool of capital that Sofinnova disclosed earlier this month. About one-third of the Biovelocita fund will go toward acceleration activities, which entails Sofinnova taking a scientific idea from a university professor, designing a business plan and performing a few key tests to see if the thesis will pan out and be viable for the clinic, Seghezzi said. “On the science, if there are two to five experiments you absolutely need to run to make sure that you actually have a shot on goal to develop a new therapeutic in a medical need, that’s what we want to finance in our acceleration period,” Seghezzi said. The Biovelocita team designs the business plan, he said. The other two-thirds of the fund will then go toward reserves which can help those startups “graduate” and raise Series A funds, the Sofinnova managing partner said. Seghezzi said he expects about five to eight new companies to come out of this accelerator fund. The Biovelocita team includes partners Gabriella Camboni, Matthieu Coutet, Alex Leech and Zhizhong Joel Yao. Biovelocita’s team has already screened 300 projects and has invested in companies such as Alzheimer’s biotech BioClec, which came from Washington University School of Medicine professor Marco Colonna; fibrosis drug developer Forth Therapeutics from University of Edinburgh professor Neil Henderson; and cell therapy platform startup Signadori Bio, stated in a partnership with the research hospital Gustave Roussy.

European life sciences investor Sofinnova Partners on Tuesday closed a new biotechnology-focused fund, raising 165 million euros, or more than $180 million, to help young drugmakers advance new medicines.Called Biovelocita II, the fund was backed by major pharmaceutical companies Amgen and Bristol Myers Squibb as well as Pfizer Ventures.At least three new startups have already been launched out of the fund: U.K.-based Forth Therapeutics, French biotech Signadori Bio and Italys BioClec. None of the companies disclosed how much funding they individually received.Forth is developing treatments for fibrosis based on research from the lab of University of Edinburgh researcher Neil Henderson. The company was also backed by the universitys venture fund Old College Capital.Signadori, which will develop cell therapies for cancer, comes from the oncology research center Gustave Roussy. Sofinnova and Gustave Roussy first struck a partnership in 2023 to assess research that could be spun into biotech startups, and has reviewed 50 possible projects since launching the collaboration, according to the cancer center.The third, BioClec, is developing Alzheimers therapies. The Milanese startup was co-founded by Marco Colonna, a Washington University in St. Louis researcher whose lab studies innate immune mechanisms in Alzheimer`s disease and neurodegeneration.We have now developed a pan-European strategy and assembled a world class team to create and manage companies across the European biotech ecosystem, Graziano Seghezzi, a managing partner at Sofinnova, said in a statement.Earlier this month, Sofinnova said it had raised 1.2 billion in funds to support a variety of life sciences and healthcare projects. Launched in 1972, Sofinnovas recent investments have included nChroma Bio, CinCor Pharma and Amolyt Pharma, the latter two of which were acquired by AstraZeneca.Since 2022, Sofinnova has backed 21 biotech companies, according to data from BioPharma Dive.With the new funds, we anticipate supporting 50 to 60 new companies, empowering a new wave of entrepreneurs tackling some of the worlds most pressing health and sustainability challenges, Antoine Papiernik, Sofinnovas chairman, said in a statement in early March.The firm first kicked off its Biovelocita strategy by investing in Italian biotechs in late 2023. The second iteration of the fund will extend its reach into France, the U.K. and Denmark, with the potential to back startups from other European countries in the future. '

Sofinnova Partners\' latest fundraising haul brings the firm’s assets under management to more than 4 billion euros ($4.2 billion).\n Up to 60 new life sciences companies are set to benefit from 1.2 billion euros ($1.27 billion) that Sofinnova Partners has raked in over the past year, the European venture capital firm has announced.Sofinnova Partners—not to be confused with its U.S.-based “cousin” Sofinnova Investments—employs more than 80 people spread across its Paris headquarters as well as offices in London and Milan. The latest fundraising haul brings the firm’s assets under management to more than 4 billion euros ($4.2 billion).“All seven of Sofinnova’s investment strategies—from incubation to later-stage growth, spanning biotech, medtech, industrial biotech and digital medicine—have capital to back the next generation of life sciences companies,” Antoine Papiernik, Sofinnova Partners’ chairman and managing partner, said in a March 4 release.“With the new funds, we anticipate supporting 50 to 60 new companies, empowering a new wave of entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s most pressing health and sustainability challenges,” Papiernik added. The firm’s portfolio of over 500 companies it has backed since its creation in 1972 have been spread across seven segments including biotech, medtech and digital medicine. Sofinnova said today it will share more details on its individual funds once they have closed.Some Sofinnova-backed success stories so far this year have included Mediar Therapeutics’ idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis licensing deal with Eli Lilly and a phase 3 win for Tenpoint Therapeutics’ presbyopia treatment.The second half of 2024 saw some big hauls across biotech investment, with Bain Capital Life Sciences and Arch Venture Partners both announcing biotech- and healthcare-focused VC funds of around $3 billion. Forbion also unveiled its largest haul to date in October, as the European life-sciences-focused VC firm brought in more than 2 billion euros across two funds.Last year, Maina Bhaman, a partner at Sofinnova, appeared on Fierce’s \"The Topline\" podcast to share her insights on how investors are approaching the European biotech sector.