Eir Ventures Partners, a Sweden- and Denmark-based life science venture capital firm, has made a final close of its first fund from limited partners including healthcare company Novo and local universities.
Eir Ventures I fund raised €122.3m having made its initial close at €76m ($86m) in July last year to partner closely with universities across the Nordics and invest in their spinouts.
Other LPs include state-owned European Investment Fund (EIF), Saminvest and Vækstfonden, as well as Sustainable Development Umbrella Fund (SDUF) and family offices,
The Nordic region is home to the two highest ranked medical academic institutions in the European Union, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Copenhagen University in Denmark.
Since its launch, Eir Ventures, run by Stephan Christgau and Magnus Persson, has participated in nine investments, including:
- Pretzel Therapeutics, a company developing treatments to address the genetic roots of mitochondrial dysfunction (Karolinska Institutet and Gothenburg University);
- ArgusEye, developing sensor technologies for biological production (Linköping University);
- ISD Immunotech, a biotech startup developing therapeutics for treatment of severe systemic lupus erythematosus (Aarhus University);
- One-carbon Tx, a biotech company developing anti-cancer treatments (Karolinska Institutet);
- Sacra Therapeutics, a company developing pioneering therapies based on RNA epigenetics (Lund University);
- Sortina Pharma, developing new therapies for treatment of aggressive cancers such as triple negative breast cancer (Gothenburg University);
- biotech company Synklino, which is developing a treatment for cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections in the transplant setting (Copenhagen University);
- IO Biotech, a company founded by leading clinical researchers at Herlev Hospital in Denmark, a University hospital associated with Copenhagen University, developing novel, immune-modulating cancer therapies, that raised $115.1m on the US Nasdaq in October; and
- the $64m crossover round of Galecto, a company whose science originated at the University of Lund and is developing novel small molecule therapeutics for inflammation and cancer. Galecto went on to raise $85m in a successful US Nasdaq IPO the following month.
