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The BioInnovation Institute as a catalyst for European life science startup creation

Nature Biotechnology volume 40, pages 1175–1177 (2022)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Although a few European countries have had success in creating life science startups1, the continent as a whole still lags behind the USA in terms of number of startup deals and of total investments2. To try and harness the untapped potential of European research, Denmark’s Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) has established the BioInnovation Institute (BII). The institute’s model relies on four pillars: first, knowledge within the BII team; second, access to a very large network of investors, industry experts and government experts; third, the availability of a company incubator with state-of-the-art laboratory facilities; and fourth, founder-friendly financing in the form of convertible loans to startups and of grants for academic company-creation projects. The combination of these four pillars not only supports accelerated translation of academic research into startups but also catapults these startups to financeable inflection points.

BII is an independent not-for-profit institute run by the BII Foundation. This foundation owns a commercial arm that runs the company incubator (operated by BH Holding) and also provides the funding for the convertible loans and for grants to academics. In 2018 it was established as a three-year initial operation within the NNF, with funding of roughly $60 million; for the period 2021 to 2030, BII is now a standalone institute that has been allocated an additional >$525 million in NNF funding.

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Fig. 1: The BII model.

References

  1. van Wilgenburg, B., van Wilgenburg, K., Paisner, K., van Deventer, S. & Rooswinkel, R. W. Mapping the European startup landscape. Nat. Biotechnol. 37, 345–349 (2019).

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  2. Senior, M. Europe’s biotech renaissance. Nat. Biotechnol. 38, 408–415 (2020).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues Matthias Wulf, Johanna Roostalu, Giles Dudley and Jonathan Robinson for constructive comments to this paper. We acknowledge funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation to the BioInnovation Institute (grant no. NNF21SA0074038).

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  1. BioInnovation Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jens Nielsen, Markus J. Herrgård & Bobby Soni

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  1. Jens Nielsen
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  2. Markus J. Herrgård
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  3. Bobby Soni
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Correspondence to Jens Nielsen.

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The authors are part of the leadership of BII.

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Nielsen, J., Herrgård, M.J. & Soni, B. The BioInnovation Institute as a catalyst for European life science startup creation. Nat Biotechnol 40, 1175–1177 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01416-w

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