European venture capital (VC) firms have joined forces to establish the European Life Sciences Coalition (ELSC), the latest move by the continent’s life sciences industry to tackle a slump in its financial attractiveness.
Life sciences VC titans Sofinnova Partners and Novo Holdings are among the nine founding members of the group, which has been created in association with Invest Europe, a trade association representing VC, private equity, and infrastructure sectors.
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Those within the ELSC framework collectively manage more than €24bn ($28.6bn) in life sciences-specific assets and have invested in or helped found over 1,400 life sciences and biotech companies. The aim of the coalition is to strengthen Europe’s life sciences and biotechnology VC ecosystem by mobilising greater levels of private and public investment across the sector.
Naveed Siddiqi, senior partner of Venture Investments at Novo Holdings, said: “To succeed and scale, life sciences companies need access to substantial capital and policy frameworks that recognise the realities of developing complex, science-based businesses. Equally important, the sector requires access to experience, long-term engagement, and a deep understanding of how these businesses are built and financed over time.”
The ELSC’s creation comes amid a difficult financing scene for life sciences and biotech companies in Europe. Despite overall biotech venture funding increasing in the second half of 2025, European biotechs are struggling to capture the same capital as those in US and China. European life sciences VC funds currently account for just 7% of the global market, compared with 63% in the US and 14% in China, according to the ELSC. As per a recent report from BioIndustry Association (BIA), equity financing and VC in the UK dropped by 49% and 13%, respectively, in 2025 compared to 2024.
A clear reflection of Europe’s unattractiveness for budding companies is that all but one of 67 EU biotechs that went public over the past six years have listed on stock exchanges outside the continent.
“The coalition is not calling for handouts, but for a fundamental shift in how European capital is deployed,” the ELSC said in a statement.
The life science industry is a key cog in Europe’s economic output. For example, pharma exports reached €313.4bn in 2024 – the US being the primary destination of products. Faced with a difficult outlook for the next wave of companies, the European Commission (EC) has proposed the Biotech Act, a framework intended to make Europe a more competitive area for biotechs to work and invest in, as well as accelerating lab-to-market times. EuropaBio, the European bioindustry association, welcomed the proposal, but added that a bold approach to investment is still needed.
Armed with influential VC firms, the ELSC could facilitate that next step. The members stated they can bring “practical, market-driven perspectives to policy discussions on capital allocation, company formation, and scale-up dynamics”.
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