US-based mutual fund manager Fidelity Investments’s biosciences venture unit is to launch a UK operation next month.
Fidelity Biosciences, which has Fidelity as its limited partner, is one of the largest venture units in life sciences with an 18-strong team and Simon Clark, managing partner of the separate Fidelity Growth Partners, said last week the biotech unit’s European expansion would begin in the UK.
The move follows medical device company Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) corporate venturing unit setting up an innovation centre in the UK run by Patrick Verheyen (see June’s profile) and a separate fundraising by venture capital firm Abingworth, which has made a first close of its sixth Bioventures fund.
Earlier in the year, venture capital firm Index Ventures closed a life sciences fund with half the fund committed by two corporations, J&J and drugs group GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
GSK has also recently committed to other venture funds, including…
