Venture Leaders Biotech 2025 connects Swiss science with the US biotech market

30.06.2025 14:40, Rita Longobardi

Boston is a global hub for biotech, offering access to leading research, investors, and industry networks. As part of the 2025 Venture Leaders Biotech roadshow, 10 Swiss startups spent a week in the city, meeting investors, industry experts, and potential partners to strengthen their US market entry. The program, now in its 20th year, is organized by Venturelab with Swissnex Boston & New York and supported by the University of Basel, EPFL, ETH Zurich, Hansjörg Wyss, Kellerhals Carrard, and VISCHER.

Venturelab has been organizing international investor and business development roadshows for the Swiss National Startup Teams since 2006. The ambitious entrepreneurs and their promising startups are introduced to high-class investors and potential customers in leading technology hubs such as Silicon Valley, Boston, Asia, Barcelona, Munich, and London.

"The Venture Leaders roadshow was a game-changer. It gave me the chance to represent my venture internationally, connect with top investors, and learn from an inspiring group of founders. It validated Juvion journey and pushed me to think bigger." — Soumya Banerjee, Co-Founder & CEO of Juvion Health Sciences.

Over the past 20 years, Venturelab has selected the Swiss National Startup Teams. The Venture Leaders - the members of the Swiss National Startup Team - have traveled to Silicon Valley, Barcelona, Boston, New York, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong to dive into the exciting entrepreneurial scene of such high-level entrepreneurial hubs, helping over 600 entrepreneurs to build their vision and achieve success. They have a clear-cut goal, envision themselves as global players and want to take the first step towards their global expansion. The investor and industry roadshows are specifically structured to help them achieve this goal.

Venture Leaders Biotech alumni comprise high-flying startups such as Covagen (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Versantis (acquired by Genfit), SimplicityBio (acquired by Precision for Medicine), AMAL Therapeutics (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), NBE-Therapeutics (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), Alentis (USD 105 million funding round in 2023), Interax Biotech (Seed round with US investors met during the roadshow), and BioVersys (IPO in 2025). With the biotech industry comprising 39% of Swiss exports, the Venture Leaders Biotech program contributes to the enduring strength and vitality of the sector.

"The Venture Leaders roadshow was a great experience to explore the US ecosystem and have a direct exchange with investors." — Elia Guzzi, Co-Founder & CEO of InkVivo

Swiss Biotech startups impress US investors
The ten Venture Leaders Biotech startups, selected from over 70 applications, had the opportunity to connect within Boston’s life science ecosystem and strengthen ties as entrepreneurs facing similar challenges and goals. They pitched their ventures to investors including 5AM Ventures, RA Capital, and Knightsbridge Advisers, gaining direct exposure and feedback that helped refine their strategies for entering the US market and expanding internationally amid ongoing global uncertainties.

Participants not only built a robust network in Boston but also among themselves, forming a team of entrepreneurs with shared objectives. Beyond investor meetings, the startups took part in workshops and sessions such as a legal strategy workshop led by Kellerhals Carrard, an IP strategy session with Locust Walk, and multiple visits to innovation hubs including Bayer’s innovation center, Molecular Partners, the Wyss Institute, and Biognosys. The week concluded with final discussions at Nextech Invest and a pitch competition at the Biotech Pitchfest, where ENANTIOS earned first place and HemostOD secured the runner-up position.

The Venture Leaders program not only gave our Swiss start up access to the UIS ecosystem but inspired me as a founder to think bigger and bolder about where our company can go." — Carin Lightner Co-Founder & CEO of ENANTIOS

Venture Leaders Biotech is organized by Venturelab in partnership with Swissnex Boston & New York and supported by the University of Basel, EPFL, ETH Zurich, Hansjörg Wyss, Kellerhals Carrard, and VISCHER.

The Venture Leaders Biotech 2025 that traveled to Boston:

Abrinca GmbH: Abrinca has built the engine for microbial innovation.

A major barrier to discovery in microbial genomics research is data analysis, which demands time-intensive collaboration between microbiologists and bioinformaticians. Abrinca eliminates this hurdle w... Read more

Amporin Pharmaceuticals AG: Acute membrane repair for deadly degenerative diseases.

Amporin Pharmaceuticals AG is developing a breakthrough new class of small molecule amyloid pore inhibitors that can uniquely protect and repair cell and mitochondrial membranes from the damage caused... Read more

Apricot Therapeutics AG: Data-driven drug discovery for targeted medicine

Apricot BIO, a spin-off from the University of Zürich, is positioning itself to become the “Google maps” of the tumor cell by combining drug perturbations, image-based phenotypic profiling, systems bi... Read more

Aukera Therapeutics GmbH: Our drugs keep the cell's growth engine mTORC1 in check

Aukera Therapeutics is a preclinical-stage biotech spin-off from the University of Basel, emerged from pioneering research on mTOR biology. We specialize in leveraging protein design to drive drug dis... Read more

ENANTIOS AG: Solution to analyze chiral molecules and biologics.

Modern pharmaceutics are becoming more and more structurally complex, and traditional measurement techniques are slowing down the discovery pipeline. At Enantios we are leveraging new measurement tech... Read more

Encelta AG: Providing healthy immune cells to patients in need.

Encelta has developed a groundbreaking cell therapy platform addressing key challenges in the field. Our allogeneic T-cell product is uniquely compatible with all 7 approved bispecific antibodies and ... Read more

HemostOD SA: Producer of donor free universal platelets for transfusion

HemostOD is assembling a novel, cell-based production platform based on natural human biology that makes blood platelets for transfusion in hours, not the days taken by its competitors. In pre-clinic... Read more

InkVivo Technologies SA: Best in class polymer platform for formulating drug delivery

At InkVivo we combine our patented biomaterial platform with our advanced manufacturing approach to produce systems that ensure localised and temporal controlled release of active ingredients (e.g., s... Read more

Juvion Health Sciences SA: Improving health span in the elderly: Nurturing motion

Juvion’s vision is to redefine aging biology. We aim to prove that age-related loss of movement and memory is driven by weakening cell communication in the nervous system, and that it can be restored ... Read more

Nerai Bioscience AG: Reimagining genetic medicine through protein engineering.

Nerai pioneers novel highly personalized CRISPR proteins to deliver lifelong cures for diseases beyond the reach of current genome editing. By fusing AI with programmable biology, its editors redefine... Read more