French government and pharma firms back €33M biotech seed fund
This article was originally published in Scrip
The French government has sunk €25 million into a seed company to back life sciences and healthcare start-ups. Industrial partners have added a further €8.5 million to give Inserm Transfert Initiative (ITI) €33.5 million in total to invest in around French 15-20 firms over five years.
ITI was set up in 2005 by Inserm Transfert, the tech transfer arm of the French national health and medical research funder Inserm, with backing from the government and private venture firms Sofinnova Partners and Natexis Venture Selection. It now has 14 companies in its investment portfolio, with €37.7 million under management. The latest fundraising will make it the largest life sciences seed and pre-seed company backed by a French public sector research organisation.
Almost half of its funds (€15 million) come from the French Fonds National d'Amorçage (FNA), a state-run fund managed by CDC Entreprises, the investment arm of the national financial institution Caisse des Dépôts which is focused on small and mid-sized enterprises. The FNA has €400 million in total to invest in 15-20 seed capital funds focused on strategic sectors. €5 million was also invested in ITI by CDC Entreprises through a separate investment programme, while Inserm/Inserm Transfert invested a further €5 million.
Industry investors included the French medical malpractice insurer SHAM (La Société Hospitalière d’Assurances Mutuelles), Abbott, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, GlaxoSmithKline, Ipsen, LFB Biotechnologies, MSD France and Sanofi.
ITI wants to invest an average of €2 million per company. It has already successfully exited from three of its investments: Innate Pharma, which listed on NYSE Euronext Paris, Immupharma, which listed on London's AIM, and CellVir, which was sold to Pharma Omnium.