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Venture Leaders Biotech 2025 kick off at Swiss Biotech Day ahead of Boston roadshow

06.05.2025 11:00, Rita Longobardi

Ten Swiss biotech startups were introduced as the Venture Leaders Biotech during Swiss Biotech Day in Basel. In June, they will travel to Boston for a week of investor meetings and business development activities in the US life sciences ecosystem.

Held in Basel, Swiss Biotech Day has become one of Europe's most prominent life sciences conferences. Since 2021, attendance has grown by approximately 40% each year. The 2025 edition brought together around 2,500 participants from more than 40 countries, including over 100 exhibitors and 17 international delegations. The event continues to attract senior decision-makers, investors, and company representatives from across the global biotech industry.

Switzerland's life sciences sector remains a major contributor to the country's economy. In 2024, the Swiss biotech sector reported record revenues, with CHF 7.3 billion in capital investments, surpassing CHF 2 billion and marking a 50% increase from the previous year. Biotech continues to attract the most venture capital of any sector in Switzerland, accounting for 31% of the total invested capital.



After their presentations, the 2025 Venture Leaders Biotech team joined a workshop on legal considerations for biotech fundraising, hosted by program partner VISCHER. In the afternoon, the startups introduced their technologies and business cases to the audience at Swiss Biotech Day. Kelvin Stott, CEO of Amporin, was elected as the team captain for the upcoming Boston roadshow.


From left to right: Elia Guzzi, Stefan Imseng, Faouzi Khechana, Kelvin Stott, Carin Lightner, Soumya Banerjee, Sasha Melkonyan, Thomas Roder, Edo Kapetanovic, and Michael Zering

The 10 startups will follow in the footsteps of high-flying former team members such as Araris Biotech (recently announced its acquisition for USD 1.1 billion), Covagen (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Versantis (acquired by Genfit), AMAL Therapeutics (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), NBE-Therapeutics (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), Alentis (USD 105 million funding round in 2023), and BioVersys (recent IPO on the SIX Swiss Exchange).

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

Follow the entrepreneurs and the Venture Leaders Biotech roadshow on social media using the hashtag #VLeadersBiotech or on https://www.venturelab.swiss/venture-leaders-biotech.



Learn more about the Venture Leaders Biotech 2025:

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

InkVivo integrates its proprietary polymer platform with AI predictive modeling to accelerate drug formulation and de-risk clinical outcomes. This combined materials-science and data-driven approach i... 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