V-Bio Ventures

V-Bio Ventures

Christina Takke and Willem Broekaert co-founded V-Bio Ventures in 2015, anchoring the firm to the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), one of Europe's most prolific life-sciences research institutes. The firm emerged as a formalized venture arm after the founders had already managed VIB's seed fund, recognizing a structural gap between academic discovery and institutional venture capital in Belgium and the broader Benelux region. Their fund mandates are built around translating early-stage academic breakthroughs into investable therapeutics, agricultural biologics, and diagnostic platforms. V-Bio Ventures operates across biotechnology, agritech, and diagnostics, typically leading seed and Series A rounds with reserved follow-on capital through Series B. The firm builds concentrated portfolios of 15–20 active companies, often as the founding institutional investor. Confirmed positions include Agomab Therapeutics, a fibrosis-focused developer that attracted OrbiMed and Pfizer Ventures in later rounds, and Aphea.Bio, an agricultural-biologicals company working on microbial crop treatments. Its geographic focus spans the Benelux region, the United Kingdom, and neighboring European clusters such as Heidelberg and Basel. No publicly disclosed AUM or headcount is available, though the firm typically manages multiple vintage funds with over 20 active portfolio companies. The fund-raising trajectory has been measured — fund sizes have grown in step with the expansion of VIB's deal pipeline and the partners' ability to syndicate with larger U.S. and European crossover funds at Series B. In 2022, V-Bio Ventures held a first close on its third fund, targeting capital to continue seeding new spin-outs from the VIB ecosystem and select external opportunities. V-Bio Ventures' structural differentiator is its embedded relationship with VIB, which provides proprietary access to inventions from more than 1,800 researchers across five universities in Flanders. The partnership functions like an institute-tethered venture studio: the firm's investment team works alongside VIB's tech-transfer office at the pre-company stage, refining IP strategy and recruiting management before external investors encounter the asset. This narrow pipeline gate creates a sourcing advantage that generalist European life-science funds cannot easily replicate.