GSK and J&J back $1 billion biotech byproduct from Index Ventures

Index Ventures, Associate in Nursing early capitalist in technology hits like Skype and Dropbox, is spinning off its biotech portfolio into a replacement $1 billion (695 million pounds) business, with backing from drug giants

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N).

The new Medicxi Ventures business are junction rectifier by the present life sciences team from Index Ventures and includes all the present biotech portfolio corporations.

Medicxi aforementioned on Tuesday it had raised 210 million euros ($229 million) for a replacement fund targeted on early-stage life sciences investments in Europe, with GSK and J&J every contributory twenty five p.c.

That takes funds underneath management at Medicxi to around $1 billion, creating it one among the biggest freelance European life sciences-focused investment corporations.

"We area unit doubling down on life sciences and early-stage investments across Europe," aforementioned general partner Francesco Diamond State Rubertis, UN agency expects eighty to ninety p.c of Medicxi investments to be in Europe.

Although Europe plays second fiddle to the us once it involves developing prosperous biotech corporations, the continent's universities perform a lot of of the fashionable  science behind new medicines.

"Every year, around thirty to forty p.c of the medicine approved by the agency (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) were truly discovered in European tutorial labs," Diamond State Rubertis aforementioned.

The new funding marks an additional vote of confidence by GSK and J&J in Index's alleged asset-centric approach to biotech finance. each pharmaceutical corporations 1st connected with Index during a European biotech fund spherical in 2012.

In distinction to the normal plan of building totally integrated new businesses, Index invests in "virtual" corporations with one experimental drugs and lowest infrastructure.

Last year, as an example, it sold-out XO1, a British firm functioning on Associate in Nursing early-stage anti-blood natural action drug with simply 2 workers.

That approach is progressively at odds with the standard technical school approach to assembling an organization.

Index Ventures is best better-known for its investments in technical school businesses however the corporate has additionally backed variety of prosperous biotech corporations, together with Denmark's Genmab (GEN.CO).

The life sciences operations being etched dead set type Medicxi account for a couple of third of Index's investments. The Index Ventures technology apply remains unchanged.

De Rubertis can manage Medicxi at the side of 3 alternative ex-Index general partners - David composer, Kevin Johnson and Michele Ollier.