Remembering Sofinnova’s Denis Lucquin, father of French biotech

Investor helped build ecosystem in France and beyond

Denis Lucquin, an architect of Sofinnova Partners, a founding father of French biotech and one of the most important figures in the growth of Europe’s biotech ecosystem, passed away April 3 at age 69 from pancreatic cancer.

As a trusted adviser to his CEOs, a mentor to his colleagues, and a champion of his companies in and out of the boardroom, Lucquin was critical to the development of a generation of biotechs throughout Europe.

Lucquin invested in 31 biotechs across three decades at Sofinnova. Some of his signature investments included Belgian Nanobody company Ablynx N.V., which went public in 2007 and was acquired by Sanofi; Nicox S.A., a biotech with Italian roots based in the south of France that went public in 1999; and Novexel S.A., the French antibiotics company bought by AstraZeneca plc.

Lucquin joined Sofinnova Partners in 1991, at a time when biotech in France was “very far from the U.S.,” Antoine Papiernik, Lucquin’s mentee and successor as chairman of Sofinnova Partners, told BioCentury.  “His vision was that, indeed, we should do a lot more for biotech in Europe, starting with France.”

To support the country’s emerging biotechs, Lucquin and Pascal Brandys, president of leading European genomics play and Sofinnova portfolio company Genset S.A., co-founded France Biotech in 1997. One of the earliest country-specific biotech trade organizations, France Biotech now has 650 members — a measure of the long-term impact of Lucquin and his co-pioneers .

Lucquin’s vision for what biotech could be in France and, more broadly, Europe drew inspiration from Jean Deleage, the legendary biotech investor who was sent by Sofinnova to found its U.S. office in San Francisco in the mid-1970s.

Lucquin brought U.S. co-investors and institutions to Europe and guided Sofinnova’s companies to the U.S. public market, a pathway to liquidity — and deeper pools of U.S. capital — that he pioneered for European biotech.

“We need to bring the ecosystem to us,” Papiernik said, describing Lucquin’s thinking at the time. “We need to bring the biotech world to where we are operating.”

This outreach across the Atlantic, Papiernik said, led Sofinnova to sponsor Bio€quity Europe, BioCentury and EBD Group’s biotech CEO and investor conference, in its first year, 2000; the firm has remained a sponsor every year since, and has worked with BioCentury to identify key issues to be addressed to build a sustainable biotech ecosystem in Europe.

Lucquin moved with deliberation as he sought to grow a rich environment for biotech in Europe, with an eye toward building companies around the strengths he found in the U.K. and across the Continent. He invested in a British CEO, Edwin Moses, to lead Ablynx, a Belgian company, and hired him later to helm a company in industrial biotech, which became a space of intense interest for Lucquin.

He persuaded Scottish CEO Iain Buchanan to relocate to Berlin to lead Noxxon Pharma AG after earlier leading Novexel, which was based in the Paris suburbs. And he was an early investor in Italian biotech, backing Michele Garufi’s plans for a start-up in the mid-1990s but insisting that the company, Nicox, establish itself in France because it was too early to build a biotech in Italy.

“It’s impossible to exaggerate how foundational Denis and Antoine were in the early days of the French and European biotech sector,” said BioCentury co-founder and Chairman Karen Bernstein.

Sofinnova now invests across Europe — comprising 70% of its investments — and the firm has seven investment strategies, including a discrete strategy for investing in early-stage Italian biotechs, its Sofinnova Telethon Strategy, and one for industrial biotech.

Lucquin’s ability to connect with people, to truly listen, and to maintain his humility was matched by his acumen for business and biotech.

Mixed into that recipe was a zest for fun that he brought to his investing — and to Sofinnova’s parties, where he was the first to hit the dance floor and often the last to leave. “Denis was a great rock n roll dancer,” according to Papiernik.

 “He used to say ‘capital risk’ is just the wrong definition for what we do,” Papiernik said, referencing the French word for venture capital, capital-risque. “He used to call it ‘adventure capital.’ Again, I think this is something that sort of portrays what Denis was about — he was about the adventure.”

‘Secret sauce’

France was deeply distracted by its “national sport” the day Papiernik met his future mentor in 1995. A man in a cycling kit with a bicycle on his shoulder had arrived at the door of the rookie biotech investor’s office; the “bike messenger” he spotted at the door was Lucquin, ready to pitch a deal after weaving on two wheels through the streets of Paris, jammed by the latest major strike. 

“Charming and disarming at the same time,” Papiernik said of his first encounter with Lucquin, finding him to be down-to-earth and humble — far from what he might have expected of one of France’s leading biotech investors.

Two years later, Papiernik would say yes to an offer by Lucquin at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco to join Sofinnova, a hire that doubled the biotech team at the firm, which also invested in tech at the time. Sofinnova was then investing out of a €47 million fund.

Bommy Lee, Sofinnova head of communications, did not realize who Lucquin was when she met him two decades later through a mutual friend while networking on behalf of her start-up.  “I was so blown away because of his humility and the way he was such a quiet pioneer,” she said of her reaction after learning she had just met the “godfather” of biotech investing in France.

 “His strength was his humanity, and he always led by listening. He questioned himself constantly. He was inspired without ever seeking the spotlight, and he was just an exceptional people person,” Lee told BioCentury. “That was the secret sauce of Sofinnova that actually made me want to join.”

A key skill Papiernik learned from Lucquin was the ability to adapt to “whoever you had in front of you,” whether it was a biotech executive or an investor in Canada or Kuwait.

 “He had this ability to connect with people that I think was uncanny,” Papiernik said. “And that’s, I think, a big part of his success. Everyone loved Denis.”

Especially his CEOs.

The walls of Sofinnova’s office at 7-11 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris are decorated with photographs of the firm’s successful CEOs. 

“It’s part of the DNA that he created for this firm; we put the people first,”  Papiernik said. “The numbers are great, but the people are more important.”

Several CEOs have multiple photographs on the wall, a testament to the firm’s loyalty to leaders who have brought them success.

 “Nothing like that has ever happened with any other investor,” Moses, who led Ablynx and later Avantium NV, told BioCentury. Seeing his photo on the wall “was a stunning moment for me. I can’t tell you. It took my breath away.”

Garufi told BioCentury that he feels “at home” when visiting Sofinnova, adding that with some VCs you “feel a little bit afraid of getting screwed.” Garufi said that he “never had this feeling with Sofinnova or Denis.” When he thinks of Lucquin, “I think first of a good person and second, an excellent professional.”

‘Magic’ touch

Lucquin served his companies well in and out of the boardroom, where he was a voice of reason and encouragement and a staunch believer that board members were there to support the company first and foremost.

Papiernik recalled being struck by how Lucquin handled himself on boards before he joined Sofinnova, when the investors were colleagues rather than partners.

 “He took the higher road always,” Papiernik said. He would not seek to micromanage the CEOs, but rather would try “to be helpful while still retaining his judgment and being able to think on his feet. So that was an incredible skillset.”

 Some investors, Papiernik said, are on boards to check on management and tick boxes.” Lucquin was very against this approach. “You need to do whatever is good for the company, not necessarily what is good for you as a representative of the fund.”

Some directors arrive at board meetings looking for confrontation, Garufi said, always “against” or “attacking.” Lucquin was collaborative.

Where some board members “always feel as though they have to say something,” Moses said, “he only said things when he thought they were important.”

Buchanan recalled his “private coaching” sessions with Lucquin over a café and croissant to dissect each board meeting.

“He was never one to get distracted by technical details of a given scientific argument. His focus was always on the larger strategic or economic picture. This enabled him to ask the right questions and not the clever ones,” Buchanan said in a written tribute shared with BioCentury. “His suggestions were always delivered with humour in a constructive, balanced and positive manner.”

Moses recalled a moment when Lucquin offered a proverb in French to the Ablynx board during a discussion of a pressing business topic. “We all looked at each other blank,” Moses said. 

“One catches more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a hundred barrels of vinegar,” Lucquin volunteered in English to the room full of non-French speakers, according to Moses.

“It was a magic moment,” Moses said, once the board understood Lucquin’s meaning, adding that counseling the company that being “polite in communications is more effective than being harsh”  was “very key to who he was.”

Hallmarks of style

Patience and support in difficult times were hallmarks of Lucquin’s style.

He was there for Garufi when an important deal didn’t come to fruition — Garufi appreciated that Lucquin trusted the CEO’s gut and counseled patience — and again when Nicox was struggling to complete its IPO. In an all-night meeting with the biotech’s banks, Lucquin and a fellow investor said, “We will buy into the IPO because we believe in the company,” Garufi recalled, noting that it was an unusual step for a VC at the time. “Then, the company was flying.”

Nicox would become, in 2017, the first French R&D start-up biotech to get a new chemical entity approved by FDA, according to Garufi.

Moses described the difficulty of attracting investors to Ablynx’s Nanobody platform and then making it work in the clinic, a process that took many years and a shift from pursuing known targets with its platform — a path the biotech had selected so it wouldn’t face the “double jeopardy” of pursuing novel targets and a new platform — to novel targets. 

“All through that, he understood,” Moses said. “The real classic titans of biotech understand you don’t develop a company like that in five minutes.” 

Europe has long been known for its outstanding science, but a key problem, even today, has been a lack of a “concrete approach from a development and regulatory point of view,” Garufi said. “The science is nothing if you don’t plan from day one.”

Lucquin could see the path from innovative idea to market potential, Garufi said. This ability of Lucquin and his Sofinnova colleagues is why he believes the firm has had a very low failure rate.

After years of investing in classical biotech, Lucquin guided Sofinnova into industrial biotech, where the firm invests in early-stage sustainable companies in agriculture, chemicals, food and materials. The firm now has a team dedicated to the space, has raised several funds and counts 20 companies in the field.

“BioCentury and Sofinnova have shared a vision of what biotech could become in Europe,” said David Flores, co-founder, president and CEO of BioCentury. “Relationships last a long, long time because the bonds between people transcend the work they actually do together. That’s why Karen and I will miss Denis a lot.”

Lucquin is survived by his wife, Brigitte, and their sons and grandchildren. The family has suggested donations to Institut Gustave Roussy, the largest oncology hospital in Europe, to support its efforts in fighting pancreatic cancer, and Jeanne Garnier Medical House, a palliative care center.