The shift reflects a frustration with the traditional path. Drug development remains slow, expensive and uncertain. Failure rates in early-stage biotech are high and capital efficiency is under constant scrutiny. Against that backdrop, venture studios have relocated from the margins into the mainstream, particularly in the United States.
A venture studio differs from traditional venture capital in one important respect: it builds companies internally rather than investing in startups that arrive fully formed. Ideas are generated, validated and structured within the platform before external financing scales the entity. The studio provides shared infrastructure, operational leadership and strategic oversight across multiple portfolio companies.
Building biotech from within
The approach gained visibility in biotech through firms such as Flagship Pioneering (formerly known as Flagship Ventures). Founded in 1999 by Noubar Afeyan and Ed Kania, Flagship has built companies including Moderna and several other successful platform-based ventures. In his recent annual letter, Afeyan framed biotechnology not as incremental optimisation but as a series of “man-created miracles” produced step by step through the scientific method. “These miracles are created. These are not sudden miracles that come in a flash,” he wrote. They proceed step by step, if the science is sound and the conditions are right.”
Flagship’s model reflects that logic. Scientific hypotheses are incubated inside the platform, tested and iterated before being launched as standalone companies with dedicated management teams. Expertise and capital are concentrated at the platform level, while individual programmes advance indepconcludeently. The scale of this model is supported by US conditions: deep venture markets, fluid licensing between academia and industest and regulatory capacity able to process large volumes of innovation. The result is a hub-and-spoke structure, multiple programmes advancing in parallel from a central scientific core.
Europe’s life sciences ecosystem is organised differently and venture studios remain a minority formation model. Academic spin-outs and founder-led startups still account for the majority of new biotech companies, but a compact number of groups are experimenting with more integrated approaches to company creation within Europe’s own capital and research environment. Two strategies illustrate how that experimentation is unfolding.
Engineering biology upstream
Belgium-based AQYLA BioVentures presents itself as a European TechBio venture builder focutilized on internal tarreceive origination. Rather than sourcing assets externally, the company develops biological theses within its platform before launching dedicated development subsidiaries.
The idea behind the model grew out of founder Florence Bosco’s experience. “I studied process engineering. Becautilize of that, I tconclude to see everything as a process,” she states. “Innovating in the way R&D is receiveting done is powerful becautilize you can impact each and every project.”
At 25, Florence Bosco became the first employee of a startup developing a bioreactor technology for the production of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and gene therapies. The technology is now part of the Cytiva portfolio and utilized by large pharmaceutical companies for the production of their gene therapies. “This is where I received the virus of biotech entrepreneurship and where I forged my professional DNA of sourcing the best capabilities around the world to assemble dedicated, lean, project-driven operational partnerships.” She later ran a university bio-incubator for five years, contributing to the creation of ten spin-offs before leading a startup herself. It was during that period that she launched to question the prevailing model.
“What really struck me were these long stories about how a tarreceive had been discovered, one hypothesis at a time, how narrow the exploration of biology was and how poor the control the entrepreneur had on the choice of the tarreceive, which was purely discovered in academic silos without cross-fertilization. It appeared to me literally as a hook-a-duck game leading to nine failures out of ten.”
AQYLA’s response is to reinvent tarreceive discovery. The platform integrates single cell multi-omic datasets, gene regulatory network inference and disease-relevant in vitro models to discover novel tarreceives and stress-test them before formal incorporation. “The long-term ambition is to significantly increase R&D efficiency for bolder pharma innovation and better patient outcome,” Florence Bosco states. “As a venture builder, we do that by modifying the game in biotech entrepreneurship.”
STARLIGHT Therapeutics, focutilized on retinal disease, is the first programme launched under this framework, securing €1.8mn in seed funding following internal biology modelling and tarreceive nomination.
Engineering risk architecture
Instead of starting with tarreceive origination, some European players step in later, shaping how assets are structured, financed, and relocated into clinical development.
Revital Rattenbach, chief executive of France-based 4P-Pharma, rejects the idea that her company is “an asset aggregation platform.” “We operate as a biotech start-up studio built around a disciplined model of drug regeneration, identifying promising compounds and redefining their biological rationale in an untreated serious disease, and rebuilding a coherent clinical and regulatory strategy around them,” she states.
Once a programme reaches sufficient maturity, it is structured into a dedicated subsidiary. 4Moving Biotech in osteoarthritis and 4Living Biotech in acute respiratory distress syndrome are examples of this model. “However, 4P-Pharma remains the strategic and scientific engine,” Rattenbach explains. Translational strategy, regulatory pathway design, clinical development planning and innotifyectual property structuring are centralised, while execution and financing remain asset-specific.
“We operate as a hybrid: decentralized clinical vehicles supported by a centralized platform. This enables precise capital allocation, clear governance, and indepconcludeent value creation milestones for each program.”
Structure designed for resilience
“Drug development is highly binary,” Rattenbach states. “The probability of success for any individual asset remains limited, even with strong science and rigorous execution.” In that context, building long-term continuity requires more than capital structuring, it requires organizational resilience.
By legally and financially separating programmes, risk is compartmentalized. “If a clinical or regulatory setback occurs, it remains limited to that specific program.” At the same time, expertise is preserved at the platform level. “This creates two effects. First, risk is compartmentalized at the asset level. Second, the broader organization remains stable even if a single program encounters setbacks.” In that sense, the studio is “not only a capital allocation model; it is a framework for sustainability.”
The distinction with the United States lies less in ambition than in structure. “The U.S. venture studio model benefits from deep capital markets and a dynamic licensing environment between universities, biotech companies and large pharmaceutical groups. This supports large hub-and-spoke structures with multiple programs relocating in parallel. Europe operates in a different context. Capital markets are more fragmented, public funding plays a significant role, and academic ecosystems are often more nationally organized.”
European studios therefore combine private investment, public support and strategic partnerships, often with a focus on capital efficiency and disciplined asset selection. Some convergence may happen as European financing ecosystems continue to mature. “I believe Europe will maintain specific characteristics, particularly a focus on scientific depth, structured development, and careful capital allocation”, Rattenbach stated.
In that sense, the European model may not replicate the U.S. system but rather evolve to reflect its own strengths.
This article was originally published in European Biotechnology Magazine Spring 2026.
Leave a Reply