What does Investing in Biotech really mean?
Biotech is one of the strangest, sexiest and scariest industries in the world!
Story written by Franck Lescure & Louisa Mesnard
Biotech is often associated with a dark and incomprehensible world that only experts know about. That’s why, Franck Lescure, our Life Sciences Partner, joined us at Elaia in 2018. As well as doing deals, he teaches the team what Biotech really is every Monday!
Franck didn’t join Elaia alone. He came with 8 of his previous investments (learn more here below), amazing biotech startups focusing on finding new breakthroughs related to infectiology & microbiology. Considering that Elaia also invests in HealthTech (think of Sancare, Sim&Cure & Gleamer), this strategic move makes Elaia one of the most active Biotech investors in France!
Investing in Biotech innovation
Let’s start off with what biotech really is! A biotech company is a company that uses new scientific and engineering knowledge in life sciences to offer disruptive technology solutions to the market. It concerns sectors such as Healthcare, Agronomy and/or Chemistry. It may also be new molecules, new cells or organisms, new devices, new tools, new materials, new protocols or more recently new digital applications.
What does a company developing a new disruptive medical device in Healthcare, a platform for disruptive bioproduction of existing chemical compounds, a new natural biocide produced by a living organism for biocontrol solutions and a software allowing optimized analysis of complex genomic data have in common? They are all biotech startups!
It is not surprising that the vast majority of biotech companies are spinoff of academic laboratories. This means that the first challenge that an early investor in a biotech project will face is the conversion from science project to a biotech development project. Then, all biotech companies follow the same cycle with the following challenges:
1/ Feasibility (manufacturing),
2/ Efficiency (efficiency trials, ie. clinical trials in Healthcare),
3/ Tolerability (regulatory),
4/ Attractivity (market)
Biotech is becoming sexy!
The sexy-ness of biotech companies comes from:
- The society evolution: the world population is aging which increases the therapeutic demand, challenges in Healthcare remain huge (cancer, neuro-degenerative diseases, viral infections, bacterial multi-resistance, auto-immune diseases, genetic disorders, …), sustainability demand creates new challenges for which biotech is particularly fit, Medicine, and more generally Biology, are accumulating high content data which need computational capacities to be analyzed, …etc.
- The potentially huge payoff (which also means taking major risks): biotech investment returned the excess of 14% annually in the last decade and showed possibilities for increasing.
8 Biotech companies join Elaia
We are delighted to welcome 8 French biotech companies to the Elaia family (check out our entire portfolio here):
👉 Amoeba has developed a biological biocide which should replace traditional chemical treatments used to face microbial threats in water management or plant crop industries (bio-control).
👉 EnobraQ has developed an outstanding expertise in metabolism engineering and is positioned as a designer of crop metabolisms to generate new traits for agricultural biotechnology.
👉 Exeliom Biosciences is developing a new class of medicines, called Live Biotherapeutics, based on growing understanding of the central role of the microbiota in the immune system, with a first application in the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn Disease or Ulcerative Colitis.
👉 Fab’entech is the worldwide specialist of F(ab)’2 polyclonal antibodies. his technology represents a high potential weapon to fight against poisons, venoms, toxins, drug poisoning, emerging infectious pandemics, or bioterrorism.
👉 Flash Therapeutics is pioneering the use of lentiviral-delivered therapies to treat previously untreatable diseases. The company has developed a GMP bioproduction capability based on a state-of-the-art technology and know-how. The company is also developing both proprietary gene therapy products, to be spun-out or out-licensed, and partnered gene therapy products, to generate future development milestones and royalty payments.
👉 Nosopharm is developing first-in-class antimicrobials, including antibiotics and antifungals. The company has developed a forefront expertise in identification of compounds of interest within a database of soil microorganisms.
👉 Pherecydes is bringing the one-century old technology of phage therapy to the GMP grade of the pharmaceutical industry, opening its wide usage to fight against the raising threat of multi-resistant bacterial infections.
👉 Pylote Founded in 2009 and based in Toulouse (France), Pylote is a key player in the cleantech industrial mineral and ceramic chemistry. Pylote is developing, producing and marketing a unique in-house natural protection solution patented from process to applications to solve issues faced by consumers with regards to safety, hygiene and sustainability.
And we are looking for more!
HealthTech companies is an industry we love and will continue investing in — think of our past investments in Sancare, Gleamer and in the past couple of months: SeqOne & Sim&Cure.
So if you are working in the space, feel free to contact deal (at) elaia.com, we can’t wait to hear from you!
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