Andera Life Sciences closes sixth fund above target on EUR 456m

The new fund closed EUR 6m above target and is over EUR 200m larger than its predecessor, BioDiscovery 5. 

Paris-based Andera has taken nearly three years to raise BioDiscovery 6, first announcing it in January 2020 and holding a first close in February 2021 on EUR 300m. 

The vehicle is one of the largest European specialist life sciences funds raised this year, at a time when fundraising is slowing for more generalist GPs. 

"LPs need a certain level of diversification and are starting to appreciate this decoupling of healthcare from other venture capital and generalist funds," Jan van den Bossche, a partner in the life sciences team told Unquote. "I have seen peers trying to be even more specialised within healthcare but the jury is still out on returns." 

The resilience of healthcare and life sciences, alongside infrastructure, one of Andera's other investment strategies, is increasingly appealing to LPs, he added.  

Specialist healthcare funds are on track for another record year of fundraising, as previously reported by Unquote. Other large healthcare raises include LSP 7, Cathay Capital, and SHS.

"The general fundraising sector for venture capital life sciences is in very good shape. It means we can build strong syndicates," said Bossche.

BioDiscovery 6's backers include funds of funds, insurance companies, pension funds, family offices, private investors and pharmaceutical companies. One of the fund's LPs is the European Investment Fund, according to Unquote Data. 

Investments
BioDiscovery 6 will deploy tickets of EUR 5m-15m across around 20 platform investments in innovative therapeutics and medical technologies companies across different stages of the risk spectrum.

"It's not classical seed funding but we have made a few investments in pre-clinical, university spinouts with initial management teams," said Bossche. "We also look at later-stage Series B or C that have clinical validation but still need more clinical paths or routes to market." 

Andera's life sciences platform is quite agnostic by wanting to deploy across a range of indications, he said, but is particularly interested in oncology, neurology and immunology. 

The bulk of the deployment will be in Europe although the fund can invest in the US, he added. 

There will be a possibility to look at PIPE transactions considering the mass of publicly-listed life sciences companies trading under cash but the priority of the fund is privately-owned companies, he said. 

The fund has already made six investments, syndicating a USD 83m Series A for US-based Evommune, which treats chronic inflammation; USD 80m Series B for Amolyt, for rare endocrine; and a USD 110m Series A for US-based Mineralys, treating hypertension. 

It has also taken part or led rounds for Dutch thrombotic disease-focused TargED; German antibody-drug conjugates developer Tubulis; and French immunotherapeutic antibodies maker Imcheck.

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