By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation (LSN)
Across Europe, early-stage life science innovation isn’t held back by a lack of capital. It’s held back by a lack of translation. Brilliant ideas emerge every day from universities, startups, and labs, but too few of them cross the chasm into fundable, scalable ventures. Not because investors are uninterested, but because the signal is still forming.
That is the gap RESI Europe is built to fill.
RESI Europe is intentionally focused on companies in the earliest stages of formation: seed, Series A, and Series B. In practical terms, that means seed financings up to $2M, Series A rounds up to $10M, and Series B rounds up to $50M. RESI is also cross-domain by design, connecting drugs, devices, diagnostics, and digital health under one roof so that cross-silo innovation can actually be seen and underwritten. These companies are not yet de-risked. They are still shaping their data, refining their narrative, and clarifying what kind of asset they are becoming.
Unlike broad partnering events that are optimized for finished stories, RESI Europe’s product is filtration, not exposure. The investors and partners who participate specialize in early risk and engage before all the questions are answered, because that is when the partnership has the greatest leverage. And RESI does this at a registration cost typically around half of what many large European partnering conferences charge, making serious early-stage partnering accessible rather than exclusive.
Partnering at this stage is not about acceleration.
It is about preparation.
Europe does not need more capital flowing into the same mature assets. It needs a mechanism to translate potential into signal and the clarity to underwrite early-stage opportunities. Without that translation, meetings happen but decisions do not. Not because the science is weak, but because the story is still illegible.
RESI Europe exists to make early innovation readable and to bring investors, strategics, and entrepreneurs together around the translational work that must happen before Phase II-level legibility is possible.
In our past issue, we took a look at all the financing deals that The Needle has covered since our inaugural issue. This week we turn our attention to last year’s deal making in the preclinical biotech space.
In 2025, preclinical dealmaking didn’t just slow — it polarized. Capital clustered around AI-enabled discovery, China-sourced assets, and in vivo CAR-T cell therapies, while entire therapeutic categories effectively disappeared from licensing activity. Based on the 131 publicly disclosed preclinical transactions in our sample, we reveal where early-stage risk capital is still flowing — and where it has quietly retreated.
Similar to the data we reported in our past newsletter, our analysis captures only publicly disclosed deals (partnerships, research collaborations, licenses, joint ventures, reverse mergers, equity investments and options) on business wires, industry news sites, and venture-fund sources. In the preclinical space, many deals are carried out in stealth, and companies in some important regions (like China) don’t use business wires or news sources traditionally available in the West. For these reasons, our estimates underestimate the true level of early-stage preclinical dealmaking.
In total, we tracked 131 preclinical deals over the year, of which 42 were licensing deals, 64 were strategic partnerships/collaborations and 14 were mergers and acquisitions (M&As). In keeping with early stage’s exploratory nature, the importance of stealth, and the non-compensatory nature of much of the work done, over half of the publicly announced strategic partnerships (35 deals; 55%) had no terms disclosed. As one would expect, a smaller proportion of the licensing deals failed to provide terms, but even for this category, 8 of the 48 transactions (17%) didn’t give financial details. Four of the 14 M&As that we tracked also made no mention of deal terms.
Geographical distribution of preclinical biotechs involved in partnerships, licenses and M&As for Q2-Q4 2025. Source: Haystack Science
US-headquartered companies continue to dominate the dealmaking landscape, whether it is research collaborations, licensing or trade sales. One reason for the dominance of companies in the US — and the UK, which is second in deal activity — is likely simple math; a greater number of companies are financed and built in these countries compared with the rest of the globe (see The Needle Issue #22).
Types of therapeutic under development in preclinical biotechs that were partnered, licensed or acquired in Q2-Q4 2025. Source: Haystack Science
Strategic partnerships in 2025 favored platforms over products — and Western biotechs over Asian peers.
The 64 strategic partnerships we tracked had upfront payments that ranged from $5 million to $110 million, but the median ($35.5 million) underscores how concentrated value remains in a handful of outlier platform deals.
US companies accounted for 37 of the 64 deals (58%). Three notable partnering big-ticket deals involved biotechs splashing out large sums on preclinical collaborations, with the payers showing interest in branching out into new therapeutic modalities: last May, CRISPR Therapeutics (San Diego, CA) pivoted from gene editing to siRNA, paying $95 million to Sirius Therapeutics (Shanghai, China) to co-develop a long-acting siRNA designed to selectively inhibit Factor XI for thrombosis; in December, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (Tarrytown, NY) spent $150 million (and made an equity investment) to jointly develop Tessera Therapeutics’ (Somerville, MA) target-primed reverse transcription therapy (TSRA-196), which uses lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver RNAs encoding an engineered reverse transcriptase (‘gene writer’), writer-recognition motifs, and a SERPINA1 template to correct a mutation in alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency; and later the same month, peptide developer Zealand Pharma (Søborg, Denmark) announced a transaction with OTR Therapeutics (Shanghai, China), paying $20 million upfront for small-molecule programs centered around validated targets of Zealand’s franchise in cardio-metabolic disease.
Disease areas in which preclinical biotechs are developing therapeutics that were partnered, licensed or acquired in Q2-Q4 2025. Source: Haystack Science
For obvious reasons, target discovery and drug screening comprise about a third of collaborations and partnership agreements, but do not figure much in licensing and M&A. Mentions of machine learning in partnering deals (18.2% of 2025’s deals, with several in the top 10 grossing set) suggest large-language and other models are an increasingly established facet of preclinical development. Neurodegenerative disorders garnered the second largest number of partnering transactions in our 2025 sample. And, with all the noise around GLP-1s and other incretins, metabolic disease and obesity were the focus of 11% of deals.
Perhaps the most counterintuitive finding in the partnership data is the near-total absence of China-headquartered companies — despite their dominance in preclinical licensing. This may reflect geopolitical friction, IP risk tolerance or a Western preference for control in collaborations. Alternatively, the absence may reflect the limitations of Haystack’s methodology for collecting data. Certainly, the partnership data contrasts starkly with our licensing data, which show Chinese assets performing so well that they are biting at the heels of US companies and running far ahead of UK companies. In contrast, for strategic partnerships, it was UK-, and South Korea-based firms that were most prominent behind the US (15%, and 7% of dealmaking, respectively).
Top 10 partnering deals for preclinical biotech companies Q2-Q4 2025 ranked by size of upfront payment. Source: Haystack Science
For licensing, the shift to Asia seen in later parts of the biotech pipeline is also manifest in the preclinical space.
Chinese companies were involved in nearly a quarter of all the licensing deals made last year, clinching 11 out of the 48 deals we tracked. This interest in early-stage Chinese assets mirrors last year’s banner deals for later-stage assets, such as Pfizer’s ex-China rights acquisition of 3SBio’s (Shenyang, China) PD-1 x VEGF bispecific antibody for $1.25 billion, or GSK’s $1.10 billion acquisition of Jiangsu Hengrui’s (Lianyungang, China) phosphodiesterase 3/4 inhibitor and oncology portfolio. Overall, deals seeking access to assets from Asian biotechs (companies based in China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan) comprised 33% of all preclinical licensing transactions in our sample.
Looking at the preclinical licensing as a whole, upfront amounts ranged from $0.7 million to $700 million, with a median value of $35 million. Most deals centered around cancer, followed by autoimmune, neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases.
What was perhaps most surprising is that we didn’t see any licenses for preclinical assets in the cardiovascular space, suggesting that the interest of a few years ago has somewhat diminished (although assets for heart disease still made up 4% of partnering agreements). Notably absent from preclinical licensing in 2025: cardiovascular, pulmonary, skeletomuscular, hepatic, pain, psychiatry, women’s health, sleep, hearing, and stroke. This pattern perhaps reinforces the industry’s retrenchment toward genetically anchored, biologically de-risked indications. Together, these licensing gaps underscore a 10-year low in early-stage risk appetite outside traditional blockbuster categories.
The top 10 licensing deals from last year are listed in the Table below. Of this elite tier of top-grossing deals, cancer and autoimmune comprised the lion’s share (70%), with neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, metabolic, and ophthalmic disease all represented. Only two of the top 10 deals involved traditional small molecules (with one additional license for a molecular glue), whereas biologics accounted for seven. While small molecules still comprise the biggest chunk of licensing activity (18.9%), deals trended toward bispecific and multispecific antibodies for cancer immunology and autoimmune indications — and biopharma was prepared to pay: Of the 8 licensing transactions for multispecifics in our sample, IGI Therapeutics’ (New York, NY) deal with Abbvie, and CDR Life’s (Zurich, Switzerland) agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim, ended among the top 10 grossing deals of the year.
Top 10 licensing deals for preclinical biotech companies Q2-Q4 2025 ranked by size of upfront payment. Source: Haystack Science
Which leads us to mergers. Overall, we tracked 14 M&A deals last year in the preclinical space. According to Dealforma data presented at JP Morgan, private biopharma accounted for just over 55% of merger activity in 2025 on par with previous years. In the Haystack data, 12 of the 14 acquisitions for preclinical programs were for US-based private companies, reinforcing the historical trend of American biotechs outperforming those in the rest of the world in terms of negotiating successful exits for their investors.
M&A deals for the eight preclinical biotech companies in Q2-Q4 2025 where financial terms were disclosed ranked by deal size. Overall, Haystack tracked 14 preclinical M&As, six of which gave no financial terms. Source: Haystack Science
The biggest story in early-stage mergers from last year, though, was biopharma’s ravenous appetite for in vivo CAR-T cell therapy, with Capstan, Orbital and Interius comprising 3 of the 14 acquisitions recorded by Haystack, all of which ranked among the top 5 highest upfront payments. As our sampling commenced in April 2025, we missed another deal: AstraZeneca’s acquisition of lentiviral in vivo CAR-T therapy developer Esobiotec, originally announced in March 2025 with an upfront of $425 million. All in all, in vivo CAR-T therapies claimed 4 of the top 5 acquisitions last year.
In sum, the preclinical dealscape in 2025 reveals an industry willing to fund innovation — but only when paired with platform leverage, delivery, or late-stage optionality. As Haystack tracks dealmaking through 2026, the key question will not be whether capital returns to early-stage biotech, but whether it broadens beyond today’s narrow set of ‘acceptable’ risks. We look forward to tracking deals throughout 2026 and identifying new emerging trends in biotech deals.
A venture capital firm is focused on investing in breakthrough technologies that aim to prevent disease and extend healthspan and lifespan. The firm’s investment sweet spot is at the Seed stage and the firm may consider Series A opportunities on a case-by-case basis. Typical check sizes are around $1M, with the ability to invest up to $5M. The firm is open to opportunities globally, with a particular focus on Europe and the United States. The firm generally does not lead investment rounds or take board seats but provides active support to portfolio companies.
The firm seeks to invest in genuinely innovative and differentiated therapeutics and digital health opportunities. Within therapeutics, the firm prefers areas outside of oncology, with a focus on novel biological targets. Areas of particular interest include aging-related technologies, especially regenerative or reversal approaches rather than simple lifespan extension. Within digital health, the firm is interested in consumer-facing technologies that improve accessibility to healthcare.
The firm is open to engaging at very early stages, including lab spinouts. The firm does not impose specific requirements on companies or management teams.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
The firm is a venture capital firm focused on investments across life sciences, healthcare, and advanced technology sectors. The firm invests in biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, functional foods, and AI-driven technologies, as well as convergent applications spanning areas such as autonomous systems, robotics, semiconductors, energy, and telecommunications. The firm manages multiple investment vehicles and continues to expand its investment activities through successive funds.
Historically, the firm has invested primarily in domestic companies but is actively seeking new investment opportunities in the United States.
Within life sciences and healthcare, the firm invests across biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, digital health, and functional foods. The firm also supports AI-enabled and cross-disciplinary technologies that bridge healthcare with advanced engineering and data-driven innovation. Within biopharmaceuticals, the firm evaluates both preclinical and clinical-stage companies developing innovative therapeutic and diagnostic solutions.
From a company and management team perspective, the firm prioritizes businesses built on strong fundamental technologies with sustainable growth potential. The firm favors teams that demonstrate technical excellence, long-term commitment, and the ability to execute effective commercialization strategies. The firm emphasizes close partnership with founders who are resilient, innovation-driven, and oriented toward building globally competitive companies, and provides active support from early development through later-stage growth and exit.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
A venture capital firm that historically focused on deep-tech and hardware is now expanding its scope to opportunities at the intersection of deep-tech and life sciences. The firm is currently investing from its second fund, sized at approximately USD $75M. The firm participates in Pre-Seed and Seed financing rounds, with typical allocations ranging from USD $500K to $2.5M. The firm prefers to lead or co-lead investment rounds and evaluates opportunities across Europe and the United States.
Within life sciences, the firm is open to digital health deep-tech companies but does not invest in application-only businesses. The firm does not pursue traditional therapeutics but will consider therapeutics that incorporate a strong data component, as well as multi-asset or platform-based technologies. The firm is also interested in diagnostics, non-invasive medical devices, surgical tools, and biomanufacturing. The firm focuses on companies at the pre-clinical and early development stages and is disease-agnostic.
The firm does not impose strict requirements on companies or management teams. The firm may consider taking a board seat or observer seat on a case-by-case basis.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
An investment firm and incubator is focused on biotechnology and healthcare. The firm prefers to participate in early-stage and Seed financings as well as later-stage and pre-IPO rounds. The firm typically makes a limited number of investments per year, with initial allocation sizes generally ranging from $500K to $5M for early-stage opportunities and approximately $2M to $10M for later-stage investments. The firm utilizes flexible capital structures on a case-by-case basis and has experience with both equity investments and convertible loans. While the firm primarily invests in U.S.-based companies, the firm is open to evaluating opportunities globally.
The firm is primarily interested in biotechnology therapeutics and medical technology. The firm considers a wide range of therapeutic modalities and has particular expertise in molecule development, while generally avoiding medical devices and digital health. The firm will evaluate diagnostic opportunities but prefers a focus on genomics and biomarker-based diagnostics. The firm considers therapeutics at the preclinical stage through Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical development, as well as medical technology and diagnostics that are in development or clinical stages. The firm is disease-agnostic and evaluates opportunities across indications, with prior experience in oncology and autoimmune-related technologies.
From a company and management team perspective, the firm prefers to partner with experienced management teams that are fully dedicated to their technology and company. The firm is an active investor and may take a board seat on a case-by-case basis depending on investment size. The firm is open to acting as both a lead investor and a co-investor.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email salescore@lifesciencenation.com.
By Tony Jones, CEO, One Nucleus (Special Guest Contributor)
Every January, JPM Week serves as a useful reference point for the global life sciences industry. It brings together capital, companies, and partners at an unmatched scale with so many co-located events. Processing how to spend their time at JPM Week is a great exercise for companies to evaluate their wider investment and dealmaking plans given not all partnering and investment environments are the same.
How to choose the best event for their company is a frequent question we receive at One Nucleus from our network and having spent time with a range of UK and European companies trying to focus their cash and time resources to optimise chances of success. JPM Week is an obvious hub to target in the US, of course, provided the homework and planning is done to try and be in the right place at the right time. Having spent time with UK and European executives at JPM, it is clear that for early-stage teams in particular, the experience they describe reinforces an important lesson. Access to an event or partnering platform alone is insufficient and depends on whether it is designed to support where a company actually is on its journey and what it needs next.
In the absence of a JPM Week, although the nascent London Life Sciences Week is trying to evolve in that direction, early-stage European companies seeking investment have a far less obvious starting point. The larger, bio-partnering events play an important role and are extremely efficient for biopharma companies of all stages in that capacity. Equally, the larger investment events play a somewhat effective role but are perhaps more suited to later-stage companies with established programs, clear clinical development strategies and well-defined buyers. This is not a reflection of scale, attendee mix or necessarily cost which is a relative term, it is a question of fit and whether that is the right place to be at the right time to justify the budget spend.
What early-stage companies can need is a different kind of forum that prioritises readiness, qualification, and stage-appropriate engagement over shots on goal. Taking a hands-on approach to curating the attending companies and investors, can create a better fit and hence increase the chances of success for all concerned. The early-stage dominance of the European sector means Europe needs this part of the conference jigsaw, providing quality connection to both local investors and channels to global investors active in their space and stage. Translating strong science into something global investors and licensing partners requires preparation, clarity around risk, and disciplined positioning, issues many young companies need guidance to work through.
That is why platforms such as RESI Europe matter in the European context. As an ecosystem organisation, One Nucleus sees the additional, not just competing value the LSN platform brings to our members, providing options over how and when to leverage different forums.
The firm is focused on therapeutics companies and does not invest in medical devices, diagnostics, or digital health. The firm is open to considering assets of very early stages, even those as early as lead optimization phase. The firm considers various modalities, including antibodies, small molecules, and cell therapy. Currently, the firm is not interested in gene therapy. Indication-wise, the firm is most interested in oncology and autoimmune diseases but has recently looked at fibrotic diseases and certain rare diseases as well.
The firm is opportunistic across all subsectors of healthcare. Within MedTech, the firm is most interested in medical devices, artificial intelligence, robotics, and mobile health. The firm is seeking post-prototype innovations that are FDA cleared or are close to receiving clearance. Within therapeutics, the firm is interested in therapeutics for large disease markets such as oncology, neurology, and metabolic diseases. The firm is open to all modalities with a special interest in immunotherapy and cell therapy.
A strategic investment firm of a large global pharmaceutical makes investments ranging from $5 million to $30 million, acting either as a sole investor or within a syndicate. The firm is open to considering therapeutic opportunities globally, but only if the company is pursuing a market opportunity in the USA and is in dialogue with the US FDA.
The firm is currently looking for new investment opportunities in enterprise software, medical devices, and the healthcare IT space. The firm will invest in 510k devices and healthcare IT companies, and it is very opportunistic in terms of indications. In the past, the firm was active in medical device companies developing dental devices, endovascular innovation devices, and women’s health devices.
A venture capital firm founded in 2005 has multiple offices throughout Asia, New York, and San Diego. The firm has closed its fifth fund in 2017 and is currently raising a sixth fund, which the firm is targeting to be the largest fund to date. The firm continues to actively seek investment opportunities across a […]
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