Andera Partners joins ELSC to mobilize capital for life sciences innovation
Andera Partners, one of Europe’s leading private equity and venture capital players, announces its membership in the European Life Sciences Coalition (ELSC), an initiative created in association with Invest Europe to strengthen Europe’s life sciences venture capital ecosystem.
Andera Partners joins the European Life Sciences Coalition (ELSC), alongside Forbion, HealthCap, Novo Holdings, Omega Funds, Sofinnova Partners, Van Lanschot Kempen, VIB, BioInnovation Institute, 4BIO Capital, Cooley and Covington.
Launched in February 2026 in Brussels in the presence of European Commissioner for Health, Olivér Várhelyi, the ELSC brings together Europe’s leading life sciences venture capital players and ecosystem participants around a shared mission: to mobilize greater public and private capital for this strategic sector, and to facilitate European policies that remove structural barriers to investment.
A pivotal moment for European life sciences
Europe has a strong scientific base, a solid entrepreneurial tradition and a talent pool that is internationally recognized. It has also demonstrated its industrial capabilities, in particular over the last decade, by generating visible success stories. Yet, innovative companies struggle to raise enough capital and grow on the continent. The figures are striking: European life sciences venture capital accounts for just 7% of the global market, compared with 63% for the United States. Even more telling, 66 of the 67 European biotechs that went public over the past six years chose to list outside Europe.
Against this backdrop, the ELSC is working on two complementary fronts: raising awareness among institutional investors (pension funds, insurers, asset managers) and encouraging them to allocate more to life sciences venture capital; and working with European policymakers to advance the availability of public capital.
Andera Life Sciences: 25 years of commitment to European medical innovation
With seven vintages of its BioDiscovery fund and nearly 115 companies supported since its inception, Andera Life Sciences, the life sciences team at Andera Partners, embodies a long-term vision for venture capital in this field in Europe. Its teams, based in Paris and Munich, currently support 37 companies in early and clinical development. Its portfolio companies delivered a multitude of drugs and medical devices that are used daily in medical practice.
In the past two years, Andera Life Sciences has completed four major exits in different European countries, representing a combined potential value of around $7.8 billion. These transactions – Tubulis (Germany, acquired by Gilead), ImCheck Therapeutics (France, acquired by Ipsen), SoniVie (Israel/France, acquired by Boston Scientific), and Amolyt (France, acquired by AstraZeneca) – demonstrate Andera Life Sciences’ ability to build global champions from across the European continent. In parallel, several of its portfolio companies went public or raised additional capital on Nasdaq and achieved major clinical milestones (Abivax, Agomab, Inventiva).
Andera Life Sciences will strengthen the European Life Sciences Coalition’s continental dimension and in particular its Franco-German axis through its operational presence in Paris and Munich.
Olivier Litzka, Partner at Andera Life Sciences, comments: 'We are deeply convinced that supporting and developing world-class medical innovations is possible in Europe. What the ELSC is seeking to strengthen is the financial ecosystem that will allow hundreds of additional companies to follow that path, delivering new medications and devices to patients and their doctors. By joining the coalition, Andera Life Sciences commits to carrying this message from Paris, Munich and all of our European locations.'
'The addition of Andera Partners further strengthens the European Life Sciences Coalition as the pan-European voice for capital mobilization into life sciences – a sector of growing strategic importance in today’s geopolitical environment and one that deserves greater attention from policymakers and institutional investors alike,' adds Sander Slooweg, Managing Partner and co-founder of Forbion and Chair of Invest Europe for 2026-2027.