About us

We invest to extend and enhance human life
Our strategy is to create a diversified portfolio of 20-25 globally leading healthcare companies with a goal, over a rolling 10-year basis, of delivering three to five companies in which we retain a significant ownership position to late-stage development. We focus on developing treatments for patients by working in close partnership with world-class academic founders and management teams.

Our business in numbers

Unless stated all financials at 31 December 2023

12

Portfolio companies

£700m

Value of life science portfolio

£551m

Capital pool

37

Members of the team

83%

Investment team with PhDs

19

Portfolio company board seats

A vision to unlock the potential from truly innovative science to transform patients’ lives

We do this by creating, building and scaling companies to turn exceptional science into transformational treatments to patients in areas of high unmet need.

Who we are

A strong sense of culture and social purpose

We invest to extend and enhance human life.

We have a strong, entrepreneurial culture, where everyone takes personal ownership for delivering Syncona’s mission. Our culture is underpinned by our values.

Our purpose, culture and values

Driving value creation through strategy

We take a long-term approach to building leading life science companies, focusing on maximising value through the cycle. Our fundamental view is that value creation in life science comes by taking products into late development, product approval and, in some cases, beyond.

Our investment process

A multidisciplinary team

The life sciences investment team members have deep technical scientific backgrounds, supplemented by strong commercial experience ranging from venture capital investment to pharmaceutical launch. 

Our people

Supporting UK life science

The UK has a thriving life sciences industry and world-class research infrastructure. Syncona is committed to supporting this via its work with academics, its portfolio companies, and co-investors, as well as through its membership of the BioIndustry Association (BIA), the voice of the life sciences and biotech industry in the UK. 

Our social impact

“The UK’s scientific research base continues to be right at the forefront of global innovation and our team continue to see significant opportunity to create more companies based on the hugely promising technology being developed to treat patients in real need.”

Chris Hollowood
CEO, Syncona Investment Management Limited

Also in this section

Our model

We create, build and scale companies around exceptional science in areas of high unmet medical need, where there is potential to take product to market.

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Our history

Syncona was co-founded in 2012 by the Wellcome Trust, the premium charitable funder of life sciences in the UK. The business was set up to address the lack of long-term funding in UK life science by creating globally competitive, sustainable companies.

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