Argobio: the venture model building Europe’s next biotech champions

Hello, and welcome to Beyond Biotech, the weekly podcast from La BioTech. I'm Dylan Kossain, and this is episode 193 for the podcast. Our guest today is Terry Logel, managing partner of Koma and chairman of Argo Bio. With a PharmD PhD in pharmacology and an INSEAD MBA, Terry has spent more than two decades bridging cutting edge science and commercial success. First in farmer r and d and then as cofounder of Karma Partners and now leading Argo Bio's unique venture builder model. Since raising €50,000,000 in 2021, Argo Bio has cofounded and accelerated several companies from top European academic labs. Three of them, Enodia, Ligo Bio, and El Kidonia have already closed seed rounds totaling more than €43,000,000, advancing novel platforms in targeted protein degradation, precision membrane protein degraders, and non hallucinogenic neuroplasticity enhancers for depression. In this episode, Thierry shares how Argo Bio reduces execution risk, embeds operational expertise, and turns promising science into investable companies that can compete worldwide. Let's get started. Thierry, welcome to Beyond Biotech. Thank you, Dylan. Thierry, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your background and what first drew you in to the life sciences world? Yes. With pleasure. So it's, already along in history and background. I'm almost 60 years old, so I started my, my studies in pharmacy. It's it was a easy choice or a very complex choice because my both my father and my mother were pharmacist. So you you you see, I did I did, I I I I don't know how much independence I had and the autonomy and maturity I had when I made this choice, but it was not a choice I I regret. And, I did my pharmacy degree and thereafter, chose to enter the science and the research world. I I found by pharmacologist, by by education, and spend my first years of my career in the in the industry as a scientist. But I don't regret because for me, pharmacology is is still my, my pedigree, my background, and the way I can smell and have my specific view and analysis on the new dog, I think this is, still very helpful. And, and, it's it's, it will always be a a way for me to have a real sense of what a dog can be or is is expected to be, even in even thirty years later, a drug still have to be effective to be nontoxic and have a therapeutic index, which is what I have been educated to to demonstrate. So this was my my start, and, definitely, life science has been my, my, my my patient, but, always, always, yeah, always a patient and always been passionate about innovation and science. So and, even thirty, thirty five years later, I'm still super excited when I see a new discovery, a new paper, and I just, feeling that something we can transform something and find out something really innovative that can transform people …