Mérieux Equity Partners (MxEP) has outlined its approach to investing in Lithuania and wider Europe, highlighting a particular focus on novel modalities such as cell and gene therapy (CGT).
The France-based private equity company announced the first closing of its Mérieux Innovation 2 (MI2) in April 2025. The fund is designed to accelerate patient access to products and services that have a transformative impact on patients’ health.
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With a target size of €150m ($175.1m), M12 aims to build a portfolio of around 15 companies, with a typical initial investment of around €6m ($7m) and up to €15m ($17.5m) after follow-on investments.
M12 made its first investment in Spanish clinical diagnostics company deepull, with an undisclosed contribution to the latter’s €50m ($58.3m) Series C funding round in April.
Home to over 400 life sciences companies, including prominent gene editing company CasZyme and AI-driven protein design biotech Biomatter Designs, Lithuania recently hosted the 2025 edition of its Life Sciences Baltics conference in Vilnius on 16-18 September.
Speaking at the conference to Pharmaceutical Technology’s sister site, Medical Device Network, Mérieux investment director Kristin Thompson said the private equity company’s aims in the Lithuanian life sciences ecosystem are the same as in the rest of Europe, with the intent to invest across healthcare verticals, including medtech, diagnostics, therapeutics, and life science tools and services companies.
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By GlobalDataThompson said: “Our aim is to invest at a stage where the proof of concept has already been shown, and then we can use our network and our know-how to really catalyse those investments into the next stage for the company — whether it’s going into clinical trials, or, for example, into an early growth phase for a services company.”
More specifically, she shared that Mérieux is currently particularly interested in investing in novel modalities such as RNA therapeutics and CGT.
Thompson added: “There is now also a move back towards more complex, small molecules as well, and we are looking at that space very carefully.
“We really try to understand what strategics are looking for. We want to make sure that there is a genuine market need – not just an incremental improvement to an existing medtech product, but something that truly represents a paradigm shift for patients or physicians.”
The maturation of the Lithuanian life sciences ecosystem
Commenting on the maturation of the Lithuanian life sciences ecosystem, Thompson highlighted that Lithuania has strongly embraced digitalisation.
She added: “On top of that, they’ve built strong bioproduction capabilities in the genetic medicine space, drawing on the academic ecosystem, as well as utilising their smaller location to develop a rich infrastructure that is helping to look at things end-to-end, which I find extremely promising.”
Thompson highlighted the Lithuanian companies that have started to create real commercial revenue.
She continued: “We have started to see some positive EBITDA for some of those companies such as CasZyme, for example.
“This is already a big hurdle for Europe in general, especially for many startups, and so seeing that come out of Lithuania really shows how the market is maturing.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 45 cell and gene therapies as of August 2025. When struggling bluebird bio, developer of three FDA-approved gene therapy products, including Zynteglo, went private for less than $30m earlier this year, some headlines sounded the alarm on the broader cell and gene therapy space.
However, observers are not convinced that bluebird’s fate is a signal of broader market decline, stating that the CGT space is currently in a state of correction, opposed to one of disarray.
