Investment area
Planetary Health Investments
Region
Europe
Date of investment
November 2021
Established in 2020, 21st.BIO has been founded with a mission to support bioindustrial companies globally in upscaling from molecule innovation to large-scale production to be able to meet market demands and thereby advance the green transition globally. The focus areas of 21st.BIO include producing proteins and peptides that can be utilised for the food, materials and agricultural industries. It is estimated that as much as 60% of the physical inputs to the global economy could be produced biologically.
Contact
Søren Møller
Managing Partner
Departments: Life Sciences Operating Committee, Seed Investments
Søren joined Novo A/S in 2011 as Managing Investment Director of Seed Investments.
Søren obtained his MSc degree from the Technical University of Denmark in 1993 and his PhD degree in molecular biology in 1997 from the Technical University of Denmark. In addition, Søren has academic training as postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Prior to joining Seed Investments, Søren served as global manager of Genomics at Novozymes. Before Novozymes, Søren was CSO and Vice President of R&D at Exiqon A/S. During Søren’s tenure, Exiqon completed an IPO and the company was acquired by Qiagen in 2016. Previously, Søren worked in cancer drug development as head of Lead Identification at BioImage and as research scientist at Novo Nordisk.
Søren serves on the Board of Directors of EpiTherapeutics (sold to Gilead), AMRA, Biosyntia, Reapplix and Northsea Therapeutics. Since 2008, Søren has been board member of Danish Biotech (the Association of Biotechnology Industries in Denmark) and DVCA (Danish Venture Capital Association).
Contact
Thomas Grotkjær
Partner
Department: Planetary Health Investments
Thomas joined Novo Holdings in 2017 and is Partner in the Planetary Health Investments team where he also oversees the Nordic early-stage activities.
Prior to joining Novo Holdings, Thomas worked in business development at Novozymes where he introduced advanced yeast technology to the biofuel industry and built a portfolio of biochemical projects. Earlier in this career, he was part of the venture capital backed start-up company Fluxome Sciences. He also held positions in biotechnology research and process engineering at Toftejorg (now Alfa Laval) and the Carlsberg Breweries.
Thomas holds a PhD in Metabolic Engineering and a MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark as well as graduate diplomas in Business Administration (Marketing Management and Finance) from Copenhagen Business School.