Abingworth Wins European Venture Capital Journal Award
The award follows Abingworth’s success in 2007 which started off with Abingworth closing its £300 million ($587 million) life sciences fund, Abingworth Bioventures V LP (ABV V) in January 2007. This is Abingworth’s 8th life sciences fund and the largest venture fund dedicated to life sciences raised by a firm based in Europe.
During the year Abingworth participated in 8 financings, including the European companies: Novexel (France; developing novel antibacterials and anti-fungals), Prosensa (Netherlands; focused on RNA interference therapeutics using exon skipping technology) and more recently Syntaxin (UK; developing novel biologic drugs that control cell secretion).
Dr Stephen Bunting, Managing Partner at Abingworth said: “We are very pleased to receive this recognition, the second year running. 2007 started well for us with the closure of our fund, Abingworth Bioventures V, which was closed in less than 3 months. Later we successfully completed Ablynx IPO on Euronext Brussels, which testifies that European markets are more than capable of supporting growing life science companies.”
This year’s nominees in the VC House of the Year – Life Sciences category were Atlas Venture, GIMV, Imperial Innovations, Life Science Partners, and Sofinnova Partners.
Background
Abingworth is an international life sciences investment group active on both sides of the Atlantic with offices in London, Cambridge (UK), Menlo Park (California) and Boston. Founded in 1973, the company invests across all stages of development, including early-stage as well as public companies. Abingworth has funds under management of over $1.25 billion.