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We had the opportunity to hear the story behind the successful Evotec by Thomas Hanke, Executive VP, who gave plenty of advice for biotech companies seeking to grow.
One of the biggest biotechs in Europe, with over 1,000 employees, Evotec is now transitioning from offering services to other companies to building its own pipeline. Thomas Hanke, Executive VP of the company, outlined how this strategy was implemented 5 years ago: “We started to leverage our technological know-how by teaming up with academics to generate an internal pipeline“.
That happened back when Joern Aldag, a biotech leader behind many biotech success stories, was the CEO of the company. This year, Evotec partnered with the University of Oxford to create a £300M (€343M) fund for biotech spin-offs. “There’s a funding gap for translational programs from academia in drug development, (…) we’re seeking to bridge it by generating a fund that specifically focus on projects coming out from university“.
According to Thomas, Evotec is uniquely positioned to take on this role. “There are not many companies that can validate academic projects, (…) few of them have the breadth of technological capabilities required“. Thomas has found Oxford to have a big entrepreneur spirit that he reckons is less common in France or Germany. His advice for people in academia is to be more daring and always think from a translational approach, focusing on how to apply your research.
During our chat, Thomas gave plenty of advice for biotech companies looking for investment, watch the video to find out what makes a company outstanding when trying to attract funding.