Boehringer Venture’s high risk, high reward strategy enters next phase

Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund is sharpening its approach as it continues to seek investments that could be of strategic interest to the German pharma in the long term. The fund’s dual focus on breakthrough therapeutics in non-core areas and novel modalities within core areas had skewed toward the former. Now, new leadership aims to bring the two back into balance. The team will also look inward at spinout opportunities from the company’s preclinical pipeline.

Launched in 2010, the evergreen €350 million venture fund’s mandate has always targeted two types of investments: first- or best-in-class therapeutics that could change the treatment paradigm in a therapeutic area outside of Boehringer’s current R&D strategy; and new modalities that target core therapeutic areas but fall outside of the pharma’s expertise in small molecules and mAbs. Initial investments are always in preclinical companies at seed or series A stage...