Novo Seeds expands company formation activities at BiOrigin with seasoned entrepreneurs

• Martin Bonde, John Haurum and Anders Hinsby join as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence
• Peter Hirth and Anders Gersel Pedersen join as Advisors

Copenhagen, Denmark, 26 November 2019 Novo Seeds, the early stage investment arm of Novo Holdings, wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, today announced that its advisory unit, BiOrigin, has appointed several seasoned entrepreneurs to its team. Former executives Martin Bonde of Vaccibody, John Haurum of F-star, and Anders Hinsby of Orphazyme join BiOrigin as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence. Peter Hirth, co-founder and former CEO of Plexxikon, and Anders Gersel Pedersen, former EVP of Research and Development of Lundbeck, join as Advisors.

BiOrigin brings various management expertise and strategic support to Novo Seeds’ portfolio companies, steering them through the critical start-up phase and grow them into successful biotech companies. The BiOrigin team work with the founders to build the necessary internal functions as interim management.

Søren Møller, Managing Partner of Novo Seeds, said: “Our mission is to identify scientific breakthroughs globally and build life sciences companies locally. To harness innovative research at an early stage and build long-term value that translates into benefits for patients, we believe that we must offer more than financial support. BiOrigin was set up to provide our incubating companies with ‘hands on’ strategic and operational support from seasoned entrepreneurs, and we are delighted to have industry veterans of this calibre join the team.”

The Novo Seeds and BiOrigin teams create and build biotech companies to a stage where they can attract the large financing rounds needed to bring them to significant inflection points. It incubates identified assets until start-ups are ready to attract significant financing. Novo Seeds also invests in existing early-stage biotech companies and has the capability to fund the companies through all stages, from these very early seed rounds to an exit.

BiOrigin’s experienced advisory board and management team further include: Casper Tind Hansen (CEO, Embark Biotech), Ian Laquian (previously Nycomed and Takeda), Jakob Dynnes Hansen (previously CFO at Evolva, Nuevolution and Zealand Pharma), Hans Schambye (CEO, Galecto), Jürgen Heitmann (Previously Takeda and Novartis) and Kristine Peterson (Director at Afyx and Former CEO of Valeritas).