Graziano Seghezzi

Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners

Speaker

Graziano Seghezzi is a Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners. He joined us in 2006 and is an active member of the Sofinnova Capital Strategy investment team.

Graziano serves on the Board of Directors of several companies he helped create and finance, including GlycoEra, T-Therapeutics, Enthera, HotSpot Therapeutics, and Mission Therapeutics. He is responsible for a number of substantial exits, including Mablink, which was sold to Eli Lilly for an undisclosed amount in 2023, Corvidia Therapeutics, which was sold to Novo Nordisk in 2020; GlycoVaxyn, sold to GlaxoSmithKline in 2015, and Omthera Pharmaceuticals, which went public on the Nasdaq in 2013 and was then sold to AstraZeneca the same year.

He has also been the main driver behind Sofinnova Partners’ growing presence in his native Italy, establishing the country’s first biotech accelerator, BiovelocITA, in 2015, and the Sofinnova Telethon Fund in 2018. “For the first time in Italy you had a place where the key ingredients of biotech were working together: dedicated capital, dedicated management, dedicated strategy, and top-tier scientists,” Graziano says of the creation of BiovelocITA. Given the success of the first iteration of BiovelocITA, BiovelocITA 2 was launched in December 2023, the first Pan-European investment strategy dedicated to the creation and acceleration of biotech startups.

He started his career in venture capital in 2001 at Sofinnova Partners. Prior to joining us, he was at Index Ventures from 2003 to 2006. Previously, Graziano spent five years working in academic research at New York University’s School of Medicine, studying oncology and cardiovascular diseases. Graziano holds a degree in genetics and microbiology from the University of Pavia, Italy, and an MBA from RSM-Erasmus University, The Netherlands.