BioGeneration Ventures closes BGV Fund V for €150 million
BioGeneration Ventures (BGV), an early-stage venture capital firm in European biopharma, has closed its €150 million ($167.9 million) BGV V fund, its largest since launching its first fund in 2006.
BGV V is oversubscribed, with demand from existing and new investors, with longtime investors Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Holdings and Bristol Myers Squibb further strengthening BioGeneration Ventures’ investor base of strategic life sciences and institutional investors. Of the new investors in the fund, 78% are from the US, all of which are large financial institutions or global life science companies.
BGV V will build on the previous investment strategy of BGV funds: dedication to early-stage ventures and company creation and seeking therapeutic innovations derived from different sciences and supported by convincing experimental data.
BioGeneration Ventures invests in 12 companies
BGV V hopes to invest in around 12 companies focused on drug discovery and development.
The successful BioGeneration Ventures portfolio includes Acerta Pharma, which was acquired by AstraZeneca for around $7 billion, and whose main cancer asset later became the drug Calquence. Recently, BGV announced Lonza’s acquisition of Synaffix for €160 million ($179 million), including a cash advance of €100 million ($111.9 million).
Edward van Wezel, managing partner at BGV said: “The successful closing of our Fund V demonstrates investors’ continued confidence in BGV’s strategy of building new companies with the aim of creating transformational treatment and generating superior returns. We are ideally positioned to support our portfolio companies and their founders with the capital and expertise they need to advance projects from discovery to clinical proof of concept. We are pleased that several leading global pharmaceutical companies share our belief in early-stage European biotech potential by investing in BGV V.”
Companies in the current portfolio of BioGeneration Ventures include: Azafaros, whose clinical candidate focused on certain rare lysosomal storage disorders in children has recently entered a phase II study; Dualyx, which raised €40 million ($44.8 million) in financing to develop potential treatments for immunological diseases; and Complement Therapeutics, which received seed funding from BGV in 2021 and recently raised €72 million ($80.6 million) in a Series A round to continue clinical development of its key product targeting the most common eye diseases, and is currently cannot be treated, with new gene therapy approaches.
