Andreas Jurgeit, formerly a director at Germany-based pharmaceutical firm Merck Group’s corporate venturing arm, Merck Ventures, is to join life sciences foundation Lundbeck Foundation’s early-stage investment unit, Lundbeckfonden Emerge.
Denmark-based Lundbeckfonden Emerge, which has hired Jurgeit as a partner, invests in biotech, life sciences, pharmaceutical and healthcare technology developers. Its portfolio companies include mucosal disease therapy developer Afyx Therapeutics and neuromuscular disorder-focused NMD Pharma.
Jurgeit has experience in R&D in target discovery and drug development from his doctoral and post-doctoral training at the University of Zurich from 2006 to 2011, collaborating with 3V Biosciences , a oncology therapeutics developer whose co-founder Urs Greber had been his professor.
Following his doctorate studies, Jurgeit pursued venture capital investments for five years at VC firm Redalpine Venture Partners, and business development and mergers and acquisitions at biotechnology producer Redbiotec.
In 2015, Jurgeit was active in startups and tech transfer at Switzerland-based natural and engineering sciences research centre Paul Scherrer Institute. He joined Merck Ventures in April 2016 as part of a life sciences team.
During his time at the unit Jurgeit led a $11.5m series A round for antibody replacement developer Indi Molecular and contributed to a $13.2m series A round for enzyme technology startup DNA Script, taking board seats at both companies.
Regarding the outlook at Lundbeckfonden Emerge, Jurgeit told GCV the Nordics, and in particular Denmark, had an outstanding research environment and there were “not too many players at formation and seed stage” as early-stage investees required closer support.
Jurgeit added: “The presence of several substantial pharma companies such as H. Lundbeck, Novo Nordisk and Leo Pharma combined with the existing biotech scene provides a robust base of talent to recruit to the new companies. In addition, the quality of life in Denmark and highly developed ecosystem helps to attract talent.”
