Seven biotech companies to know in the Netherlands 

The Netherlands has built a biotech ecosystem that is concentrated around a few hubs. The Leiden Bio Science Park alone counts over 400 companies and more than 25,000 jobs across businesses, research institutes, and education, making it the country’s largest life sciences campus. Nationally, the Dutch government has also tried to keep research and development (R&D)-heavy companies anchored through instruments like WBSO, a tax credit designed to lower the cost of research and development work. In this article, we take a look at seven biotech companies based in the Netherlands. 

Leyden Labs 

• Headquarters: Leiden, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2020 
• Area: Intranasal, antibody-based prophylaxis for respiratory viruses 

Leyden Labs is taking a different approach to preventing respiratory infections by focusing on the nose as the point of intervention. Instead of trying to generate systemic immunity, the Dutch biotech company is developing antibody-based nasal sprays designed to block viruses where they most often enter the body. The goal is to provide broad protection against entire virus families by targeting conserved regions that don’t change much as strains evolve. 

The company’s most advanced focus is influenza. Its lead effort, PanFlu, is built around broadly neutralizing antibodies that have already been shown to recognize a wide range of influenza strains. To support this strategy, Leyden licensed the influenza antibody CR9114 from Janssen, adapting it for intranasal delivery. 

Leyden is still at an early stage of development, but it has moved unusually quickly in terms of financing. After a (€40 million ($47 million) series A in 2021, the company raised $140 million in a series B in 2022. In 2025, it added approximately $100 million in funding from both private and public sources to advance its intranasal antibody programs toward the clinic, a $70 million private round, and €30 million ($35 million) from the European Innovation Council Fund and Invest-NL. 

Merus 

• Headquarters: Utrecht, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2003 
• Area: Bispecific and multispecific antibodies in oncology 

Merus has been one of the Netherlands’ most visible oncology biotech companies over the past decade, building a pipeline of bispecific and multispecific antibody drugs with its Multiclonics platform.  

The company’s lead asset for several years has been petosemtamab (MCLA-158), a bispecific targeting both EGFR and LGR5, which has shown encouraging signals of activity in solid tumors. Petosemtamab is now being studied in two phase 3 trials in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), both as a monotherapy and in combination with the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab. 

In 2025, the company announced a collaboration with Biohaven to co-develop three novel bispecific antibody–drug conjugates leveraging Merus’s Biclonics platform, and a multi-program research collaboration with Gilead on trispecific T-cell engagers in 2024. 

Merus’s progress has also drawn major acquisition interest. In December 2025, Danish biotech Genmab bought Merus in a deal valued at roughly $8 billion, with the intention of folding its late-stage oncology assets into Genmab’s broader antibody portfolio.  

NorthSea Therapeutics  

• Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2017 
• Area: Engineered fatty acids (SEFAs) for metabolic, inflammatory, and fibrotic disease 

NorthSea Therapeutics is developing a class of small-molecule drugs it calls structurally engineered fatty acids, or SEFAs. The company starts from naturally occurring fatty acids and tweaks their structure to steer biology in a more drug-like, predictable way, with a focus on metabolic disease. 

Its lead candidate, icosabutate, has been developed for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and has been evaluated in the phase 2b study. NorthSea raised a $40 million series B in 2020 specifically to complete that phase 2b program and push additional SEFAs into clinical development. 

In December 2021, the company closed an $80 million series C, co-led by Ysios Capital and Forbion Growth, to advance its metabolic pipeline. Around that financing, NorthSea and its investors also pointed to other SEFA assets moving through clinical development, including SEFA-1024 and SEFA-6179. 

ProQR Therapeutics 

• Headquarters: Leiden, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2012 
• Area: ADAR-mediated RNA editing (Axiomer platform) 

ProQR’s Axiomer approach uses ADAR, an enzyme that already exists in human cells, to make precise single-letter changes in RNA. ProQR aims to edit RNA in a programmable way, which could allow repeat dosing and tissue-specific applications as the chemistry improves. 

In 2023, ProQR reset around Axiomer and announced its first defined pipeline programs, moving away from its earlier identity as an RNA therapeutics company toward being an ADAR editing specialist with a small number of anchor assets. 

The lead program is AX-0810, which targets NTCP for cholestatic diseases. In its 2024 results update, ProQR framed 2025–2026 as the period where Axiomer would start generating meaningful clinical readouts, and it specifically pointed to topline data for the NTCP program as a key near-term milestone. In August 2025, the company also disclosed that it had submitted a clinical trial application for AX-0810. 

ProQR’s other, AX-1412, targets B4GALT1 for cardiovascular disease, again using the same ADAR editing logic but in a very different indication area. Beyond those initial liver-originated programs, ProQR has also been positioning Axiomer as a broader platform that could extend into the nervous system, and it has shared preclinical platform data in central nervous system (CNS) models in recent presentations.  

Scenic Biotech 

• Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2017 
• Area: Genetic modifier–based drug discovery for rare and complex diseases 

Not everyone with a disease-causing mutation becomes equally sick, and this is the basis of Scenic Biotech’s strategy. Some patients do better than expected, even when the primary genetic defect is the same. Scenic’s work focuses on understanding why that happens and on identifying the genes that soften the impact of disease rather than causing it. 

Instead of targeting the primary faulty gene, Scenic looks for secondary genes that influence how strongly a disease manifests and then turns those genes into drug targets. Its Cell-Seq platform is used to map these genetic interactions at scale, allowing the company to find pathways that are difficult to spot with more traditional target-discovery methods. 

Scenic remains preclinical, with programs spanning both rare diseases and oncology. In rare diseases, the company has reported work on modifier targets linked to lysosomal disorders such as Niemann-Pick type C, as well as Barth syndrome, where it has published genetic evidence pointing to druggable suppressor pathways. 

In oncology, Scenic has also shown that the modifier concept can extend beyond inherited disease. One of its disclosed programs targets QPCTL in certain B-cell lymphomas, where preclinical data suggest that interfering with modifier pathways can alter tumor behavior. That program has been progressing through IND-enabling. 

On the business side, Scenic raised a $31 million series A in 2022 and has attracted sustained interest from large pharmaceutical companies. Over the past few years, it has signed research collaborations and licensing agreements with partners including Genentech and Bristol Myers Squibb. 

uniQure 

• Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands 
• Founded: 1998 (formed in 2012 to take over AMT) 
• Area: AAV-based gene therapies for rare and severe diseases 

Based in the Netherlands, uniQure is one of the few European biotech companies with direct experience taking gene therapies from development to the market. The company has its roots in Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics and is best known for developing Glybera, the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. and in Europe, which was later withdrawn after seeing very limited commercial uptake. 

Today, uniQure’s most tangible success is HEMGENIX, a one-time AAV gene therapy for hemophilia B that received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and conditional authorization in Europe. 

The Dutch biotech company’s pipeline is now centered on neurology, most notably AMT-130 for Huntington’s disease. The therapy uses an AAV5 vector to deliver an artificial microRNA designed to lower levels of mutant huntingtin protein directly in the brain. In 2025, uniQure reported long-term data suggesting a slowing of disease progression in treated patients, a disease area where therapeutic options are still extremely limited. 

That progress has not come without uncertainty. Regulatory discussions are ongoing around what additional data may be required to support a potential approval pathway for AMT-130. 

VectorY Therapeutics 

• Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands 
• Founded: 2020 
• Area: AAV-delivered antibody therapies for CNS and muscle disorders 

VectorY Therapeutics is developing what it calls vectorized antibodies: antibody drugs delivered through gene therapy. The company uses AAV vectors to introduce the genetic blueprint for an antibody into patient cells, allowing sustained local production of the therapeutic protein from a single administration. The approach is designed for diseases where repeated antibody dosing or adequate tissue exposure has proven difficult. 

The company’s lead program, VTx-002, targets TDP-43 pathology in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a hallmark found in the majority of ALS patients. In late 2025, the FDA cleared VectorY’s investigational new drug (IND) to begin a phase 1/2 study, marking the company’s transition into clinical development.  

VectorY has been well capitalized relative to its stage. It launched with a €31 million ($36 million) seed round in 2021 led by Forbion, with participation from investors including Eli Lilly, and followed with a €129 million ($150.5 million) series A in 2023 to advance VTx-002 and expand its platform. In 2025, it entered an option and license agreement with Shape Therapeutics to evaluate a deep-brain-penetrant AAV capsid for use with vectorized antibody payloads. 

The Netherlands: A dense biotech ecosystem 

Dutch biotech is often described as “dense,” and the numbers back that up. HollandBIO’s Dutch Life Science Database counts nearly 2,000 life sciences companies and research organizations within a relatively small geography.  

However, some of the most visible biotech companies in the Netherlands end up being acquired once they reach late-stage scale. Merus is the clearest recent example, but CureVac also acquired Amsterdam-based Frame Therapeutics in 2022 to add an antigen discovery platform to its oncology strategy. 

It would be easy to read these outcomes as a brain drain, but they can also be a sign that the Netherlands repeatedly produces high-quality platform biology, while the later stages of global commercialization often pull biotech companies into larger and more capital-intensive biopharma ecosystems. At the same time, Dutch industry trackers have also flagged that the number of newly founded biotechs has been declining, even as financing for established players improved in 2024.