Columbus Venture Partners is launched, with the goal of becoming the leading life science fund manager in Spain. The main objective of its founders, Damià Tormo (biologist) and Javier García (mathematician), is to develop and invest in therapies for hard-to-treat, rare, or incurable diseases such as cancer.
Fundación Columbus is born, along with the first program to treat children with brain tumors through proton therapy in European centers.
Construction begins on the first proton center in Spain, which will treat childhood cancer in the future.
A gene therapy is developed to treat copper accumulation in Wilson’s Disease through Vivet, a company that was funded that same year with €37M from investors such as Roche and Novartis, among others.
Industrial-scale production of polypeptides for the pharmaceutical sector begins with the launch of the biotech company PTS.
Aura Bioscience proves the effectiveness of its treatment for ocular melanoma in the first patients — a non-invasive therapy that preserves vision while targeting the tumor, unlike the gold-standard therapy used until then.
We led the largest round in the Spanish biopharmaceutical sector to date, raising $80M for Sanifit, aimed at developing a treatment for Calciphylaxis — a rare disease that, until then, required amputation of the affected limb and often led to death.
Bayer acquired Viralgen for €4 billion — the largest private international deal in the biopharmaceutical sector that year. In the same operation, Bayer also acquired Askbio and TAAV, both involved in gene therapy development and synthetic DNA production.
We treated the first patients with melanoma and pancreatic cancer using the first Spanish immunotherapy BO-112, developed by our biotech company Highlight.
We sold Sanifit to Vifor Pharma for €205M, with an additional commitment of over €1 billion in milestones and royalties.
Commercialization began for a vaccine against Chinese Swine Fever in rabbits, developed and produced by Algenex.
Arcline acquired PTS — now Curapath — to support its growth and expand production of its polypeptide technology.
Aura completed its IPO on NASDAQ through a Public Offering (IPO).
Insud Pharma acquires our biotech Algenex to incorporate recombinant protein production into its pharmaceutical products.
Our quality control services company Quatre Lab acquires the Swedish company Vironova BioAnalytics — now QuTEM — to integrate electron microscopy technology and lead the advanced therapies market.
We lead the investment round for ARTHEx Biotech (€42M) to develop an effective therapy against Muscular Dystrophy, based on siRNA technology.
We open the doors of Syngel in Vizcaya, which is set to become one of the leading international biotech firms in next-generation synthetic DNA production for the pharmaceutical industry.
We launch the world’s first industrial production plant for recombinant proteins using live bioreactors. With this milestone, Cocoon Bioscience will scale production across various biotech fields: from advanced therapies in healthcare to growth factors for cultivated meat in the food sector.
We treat the first patient with a hematologic cancer using CAR T-Cell Engager (CTE) technology developed by our U.S.-based company ALETA Biotherapeutics, which expands the action range of modified lymphocytes in CAR T-cell cancer therapy.
Tolerance Bio develops a method to preserve the thymus, a key organ in the immune system that could prevent cancer and autoimmune diseases. This startup launches with an investment of over €20M and a top-tier team from the industry.
We led a €50M investment round in DeepUll with the goal of producing the first rapid sepsis test, aimed at reducing hospital deaths and antibiotic resistance.
