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Global Biotech Priorities Mapped

The US leads in biotech investing as about two-thirds of all investments — both by number and value — are by US-based investors into companies there, writes William Bains from Rufus Scientific at Nature Biotechnology's Trade Secrets blog.

He and his colleagues put together a map of biotech venture investment in different parts of the US and the world over time. From this, Bains notes that while US investment leads the way, investors on the East Coast and West Coast behave differently. For instance, West Coast investors make more investments than their East Coast counterparts, but they make them at later stages of company development. The map they made is here.

Boston-area investors, he adds, have moved toward riskier investments in the last few years and are outliers as compared to investors in other part of the country and the world.

"Overall, this shows that different territories have different investor profiles and different investment patterns in biotechnology, from the point of view of amount invested, the businesses invested in, the stage of companies invested in, and risk appetite," Bains writes.

This, he says, while "extraordinarily obvious," has implications for entrepreneurs as they search for financial backing as their concept may play into local tastes or they may have to look abroad.

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