Lonza, Forbion and BioGeneration Ventures Extend Collaboration

Forbion, a venture capital firm building life sciences companies, BioGeneration Ventures (BGV), its joint venture partner and specialized life sciences venture capital firm focusing on early-stage European biotech companies, together with Lonza, a global development and manufacturing partner to the pharma, biotech and nutrition industries, are extending their collaboration to include the development and manufacturing of small molecules.

The extended collaboration will provide services relating to small molecules for both Forbion and BGV portfolio companies active in the biopharmaceutical space. The announcement expands the current customer relationship with Lonza, where it provides customized services to Forbion and BGV’s large molecule biologics portfolio companies.

“This expanded strategic relationship exemplifies our value and capabilities to help advance biotech companies on the path to commercialization. It also highlights our flexibility and commitment to providing high-quality development and manufacturing to serve the clinical needs of our customers' portfolio companies, whilst also leveraging our GMP manufacturing expertise,” said Pnina Weitz, global head of venture capital business development and relationship management, Lonza. “The successful collaboration with Forbion in biologics and their satisfaction with Lonza’s support led to the decision to broaden the relationship to include small molecules services.”

Rogier Rooswinkel, partner at Forbion, said, “As Forbion continues to grow its portfolio, we continue to search for additional ways in which we can further the support we bring to each portfolio company. With this in mind, we look forward to extending the relationship with Lonza that we have built over the last two years on biologics into the field of small molecules.”

Daniela Couto, partner at BioGeneration Ventures, said, “The collaboration with Lonza is meant to provide even more flexibility in the early stages of company development in alignment with our fund strategy to nurture and support early-stage companies providing them access to the best resources from the very beginning.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Lonza will provide early development services and scalable manufacturing for small molecules. The offering comprises drug substance development, particle engineering development, oral solid drug product development and regulatory services. Forbion’s and BGV’s portfolio companies will be able to significantly simplify and de-risk the development of their drug candidates by leveraging Lonza’s expertise and global network.