News & Insights
This is where we share our own and our portfolio companies’ press releases as well as relevant Sunstone articles, analyses and SoMe posts.
5 latest news
5 latest insights
News Archive
Fund IV company Cardior Pharmaceuticals acquired by Novo Nordisk
Cardior is a leader in the discovery and development of therapies that target RNA as a means to prevent, repair and reverse diseases of the heart. The company’s therapeutic approach targets distinctive non-coding RNAs as a platform for addressing root causes of...
A Sunstone team update
After 17 years as General Partner and co-founder of Sunstone Life Science Ventures and almost 40 years in the life science industry, our colleague Sten Verland will be taking on a part-time role as Venture Partner as of February 1. Sten will continue to manage his...
Sunstone Life Science Ventures divests its holding in Arcoma AB
Sunstone announces that one hundred percent of the holding in Arcoma AB have been sold in a structured block sale. Sunstone has been a major owner in Arcoma since 2010 and is proud of what the company has achieved in delivering world-class digital radiographic...
Sunstone Life Science Ventures joins EUR 57 Million Series A Investment in Kynexis to Advance Development of Novel Therapeutics for Cognitive Disorders
Sunstone Life Science Ventures (Sunstone), a leading Nordic venture capital firm, is excited to announce its participation in a EUR 57 million Series A funding round for Kynexis B.V., a pioneering biotech company dedicated to advancing treatments for cognitive...
Sunstone Life Science Ventures Fund IV invests in DiogenX, a biotech company developing a first-in-class regenerative treatment for type 1 diabetes
Sunstone Life Science Ventures (Sunstone), a leading European venture capital firm focused on life science therapeutics, today announced that Sunstone’s Fund IV has invested in the Series A financing round of DiogenX now increased to €33.5 million ($33.8M). Press...
MinervaX Raises EUR 54M in Upsized Financing to Advance the Development of its Maternal Vaccine Against Group B Streptococcus
MinervaX ApS, a privately held Danish biotechnology company developing a novel, prophylactic vaccine against Group B Streptococcus (GBS), has today announced the completion of a EUR 54 million upsized financing. The financing includes investment from new investors EQT...
IO Biotech, Inc. Announces USD 75 Million Private Placement Financing
IO Biotech, Inc. (Nasdaq: IOBT), a clinical biopharmaceutical company developing novel, immune-modulating cancer vaccines based on its T-win® technology platform, today announced that it has entered into a definitive securities purchase agreement for a private...
MinervaX Commences First Phase 1 Clinical Study of Novel GBS Vaccine in Older Adults
MinervaX ApS, a privately held Danish biotechnology company developing a novel vaccine against Group B Streptococcus (GBS), announces the first phase 1 clinical study in older adults of its novel GBS vaccine, at CEVAC (Centre for Vaccinology) in Ghent, Belgium. GBS is...
Teitur Trophics Raises EUR 28M in Series A Financing to advance the development and treatment for neurodegenerative diseases
Teitur Trophics (“Teitur”), a biotech company dedicated to developing new treatments for patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, today announces the completion of a €28M Series A financing. The financing was co-led by Sunstone Life Science Ventures and...
Insights Archive
Sunstone has supported and funded companies that have been the originator of 20 life-changing products
Since the inception in 2007, Sunstone Life Science Ventures (Sunstone) has co-created, supported and funded life science companies that have been the originator of 20 life-changing products approved for the treatment or diagnosis of patients with cardiovascular,...
Biotech startups in Scandinavia have 460 MEUR at hand – but burn is up – and runway the shortest in 3 years
As the market continues to fluctuate and geopolitical issues continue to impact the economy, it's important to take a closer look at the state of pre-commercial life science companies. At Sunstone, we assisted companies in our portfolio with listings and refinancing,...
Unmet medical needs in cardiovascular sub-populations – an opportunity for VCs?
Unmet medical needs in cardiovascular sub-populations – an opportunity for VCs? For the past 5 months we have had the pleasure of having Philip Brainin as intern at Sunstone Life Science Ventures. Apart from bringing valuable insights to our daily activities, he has...
Why do VC’s not cut losses in time?
Why do VC’s not cut losses in time? A clinical trial is a very expensive experiment for testing a hypothesis, while hoping for a positive outcome. However, if well designed, a negative outcome could increase the potential for a positive outcome in a subsequent trial....
Are some diseases associated with a higher risk of venture capital losses?
Are some diseases associated with a higher risk of venture capital losses? Before summer we posted a study correlating venture capital losses in drug development with the magnitude of funding of clinical trials. We have used two approaches to find losses: 1)...
Do compromises in clinical trials cause Venture Capital losses?
Do compromises in clinical trials cause Venture Capital losses? In 2020 and 2021 Sunstone looked in depth at drug development venture-backed successes to find usable attributes and learn from the past. We have now turned the analysis up-side down and looked at the...
Who is in the driver’s seat of our industry?
A recent analysis from Pharma Intelligence | Informa 2021 highlights the current trends of pipeline products (top panel). We have subsequently surveyed Sunstone’s incoming deal flow for the same period and noted the correlation for the top 3 categories with oncology...
US IPO: Value recognition? Not really! Trading liquidity? Yes!
We previously looked at M&A of VC funded private and listed companies in the EU and US (). Listing EU companies in the US is perceived as more attractive or beneficial – but is it reflected in the numbers? Recently, we decided to take a closer look at the...
Why would you do a US IPO?
We recently compared EUR >50M M&A’s of VC funded EU and US drug developing companies and concluded that a substantial difference exists between the EU and US (https://bit.ly/3uftQmU). Previously we have also looked at EU M&A’s before or after an IPO....
M&A multiples in the US – should you go west?
Sunstone has previously investigated the return multiples of venture capital funded companies HQ’ed in Europe () and concluded that when the total invested amount exceeds EUR 50M, the return multiple tends to stay below 5 in M&A transactions. You asked us how this...
Best country for sourcing new deals?
Do you also in your mind have a priority list of destinations to visit once the world normalises and you can get back on a plane? If so, and if you are a Venture Capitalist, you may also be wondering which countries have been creating most Life Science M&A...
Why are we investing in Drug Development and hesitating with regards to Medical Devices or Diagnostics?
Part of the answer is obviously that our past experiences and successes fall within Drug Development – but also that both MedTech and Diagnostics seem to have a lower likelihood of getting to an exit once you have invested. Defining the field for Medical Devices and...
Increasing the investor return multiple with an IPO?
For private company M&A the multiple stayed below 5x after a company had raised more than EUR 45M (). We have now added 12 European M&As completed after an IPO. The figure below shows the “Grand return multiple”, i.e. our calculation of all cash received...
To IPO… or not to IPO
We have recently added 12 venture funded companies to our M&A analysis of European therapeutic companies acquired post-IPO. As expected, those companies were acquired at a later developed stage. As previously highlighted most European venture capital funded...
Modest interest in Human Safety!?
We have previously highlighted that most European venture capital funded therapeutic companies are acquired after receiving less than EUR 45M in venture capital funding. It also appears that companies are acquired either before EUR 10M have been invested or after an...
The best VC’s for developing Therapeutics in Europe?
The VC’s investing in Europe can be ranked by the number of times they have participated in a EUR >50M M&A of a company developing therapeutics. In Sunstone’s analysis of the 56 M&As that took place in the period 2010-2020, 243 named investors participated....
Beating the odds
What do you think? Let us know in our feed on LinkedIn: Using Pitchbook® we have identified 56, EUR >50M, M&A transactions of VC funded companies developing therapeutics from 2010 to 2020 and have modelled the investor cash flow in each of the companies....
Are antibody-based therapeutics and venture capital a bad mix?
Sunstone monitors and analyzes all M&A transactions for therapeutic companies HQ’ed in Europe, with an exit transaction value exceeding EUR 50M. Upon fragmenting the 43 transactions executed between 2010 and 2020 by modalities, we were surprised to observe that...
Are big financing rounds and venture star multiples a realistic expected outcome?
Like many of our colleagues, our initial investment hypothesis is always to achieve a 5-10x return when we invest. When achieved, these are often referred to as the stars, performers or unicorns of a venture capital portfolio. Sunstone continuously monitors and...
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