Future innovation at risk as venture capital dries up for early-stage companies

Funding for early-stage biopharma and medtech research dwindled in 2015, as investors shifted their support to more mature companies. These findings and more have been released as part of the Pharma & Biotech 2015 in Review and Medtech 2015 in Review reports by EP Vantage, the editorial arm of life science market intelligence firm Evaluate Ltd.

This venture investment trend, which began five years ago, could constrain future pharmaceutical and medtech innovation, as promising new scientific discoveries fail to progress due to lack of funding.

“Early stage investment is the lifeblood of the industry,” said Lisa Urquhart, Editor of EP Vantage, adding: “Our 2015 reports show it’s being given to an increasingly small pool of companies, which could cause some very serious problems in the future. Both medtech and pharma need a large cohort of start-up companies to hedge against failure and foster innovation. Depriving them of funding now could eventually choke the industry.”