Debiopharm Innovation Fund, the Lausanne, Switzerland-based strategic investment arm of Swiss biopharmaceutical company Debiopharm, with $150m under management, announced the launch of its new seed funding initiative.
It plans to deploy additional capital to support up to 15 seed-stage startups each year. Building on its track record of investing in 25 companies since the inception of the fund in 2006, with a focus on Digital Health since 2017, the fund will now add seed funding activity to invest in more companies even earlier, with the ambition to transform pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) and advance digital innovation in cancer care.
Led by Marc Cikes, Managing Director, Debiopharm plans to support the most successful startups through their subsequent Series A financing, which will remain the fund’s flagship activity.
Investments will focus on the next generation of pharma R&D to accelerate drug development, on new technology solutions enabling a more patient-centric approach in clinical trials, and on digital platforms uncovering new insights from clinical data for more personalized care pathways.
The fund has already started its activity with two Seed investments, with two more to be announced soon. The first two Seed investments include:
- Tune Insight, a Swiss-based startup offering a privacy-preserving data collaboration platform enabling the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models through secure federated learning, and
- Neuroute, a UK-based startup that develops a no-code AI clinical development platform streamlining critical processes of clinical trials, such as study design and site selection.
FinSMEs
28/09/2023