Select audience

Choose the option that best describes your role.

Search British Business Bank
Popular Search placeholder

British Business Bank agrees to commit up to £135m to two new Advent Life Sciences funds

Press release 24 September 2026

  • Bank has now committed or agreed to commit a total of £745m across 17 life sciences funds

The British Business Bank has agreed to commit £60m to Advent Life Sciences Fund IV and committed £75m to Advent Life Sciences Growth Fund, bringing its total commitment across these two strategies to £135 million. Together, these investments will help create deeper pools of capital for the UK’s high-potential life sciences companies, supporting companies from early-stage development through to later-stage growth and commercialisation.

The Bank has been a close partner of Advent since 2019 having made a commitment to Advent Life Sciences Fund III. Since then, the Bank has co-invested alongside Advent into innovative life sciences companies such as Proximie in 2022 and Cyted Health in 2025. 

Advent Life Sciences is a transatlantic venture capital firm focused on building and investing in innovative life sciences businesses across the UK, Europe and the United States. The firm specialises in early and mid-stage companies developing new medicines, medical technologies and enabling platforms.

Advent Life Sciences Fund IV will support the development of early-stage companies developing products addressing significant clinical needs across the full breadth of the healthcare and life sciences sector. 

Advent Life Sciences Growth Fund will focus mainly on the UK market, supporting companies progressing through clinical development as well as the commercial scale-up of non-therapeutic assets with initial market traction. 

The British Business Bank is the largest investor in UK venture and venture growth capital funds, and today’s announcement brings the Bank’s total commitments, including agreed commitments to life sciences funds to more than £745m across 17 life sciences funds. The Bank’s commitments have collectively leveraged over £3bn from private sector investors into the life sciences sector.

Leandros Kalisperas, Chief Investment Officer of the British Business Bank, said

We are increasing the scale of our investments into sectors where the UK has a genuine international strategic advantage, and life sciences is top of that list. By writing larger cheques to leading specialist managers, we ensure the UK’s best companies access the domestic capital they need to scale and build the UK’s ever-growing life sciences ecosystem.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said:

Britain’s incredible life sciences expertise and facilities make us among the best in the world for medicines discovery, and this £135m backing for Advent means more of our most promising life sciences firms can scale up here, create skilled jobs across the UK, and get new treatments to patients faster. Life sciences is already a UK success story, but it has the potential to grow even further. This investment shows how we are continuing to genuinely back the companies and the sectors of the future.

Mark Andrews, Senior Director, Life Sciences, at the British Business Bank, said:

Advent is one of the leading investors in UK life sciences, so we’re pleased to expand our relationship with them. The reality is that life science companies in the UK remain undercapitalised relative to their potential. By putting more capital behind specialist investors like Advent, we help the UK’s most promising life sciences companies turn world-class science into new treatments, while growing and creating jobs here in the UK.

Professor Chris Molloy, CEO of the BioIndustry Association, said:

Commitments of this size and breadth are essential to give innovative UK businesses the fuel they need to start, scale, stay and serve the world from here. Through strategic backing of Britain’s expert venture firms, the British Business Bank is actively expanding our funding ecosystem, accelerating the delivery of medicines to patients and value to taxpayers.

Further Information

If you are a journalist and have a media enquiry, please contact [email protected].

Notes to editors

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

In 2025/26 1 , the Bank supported UK smaller businesses to access £9.4bn of finance, made up of £1.3bn of public funding, £4.3bn of private capital crowded in by the Bank and £3.7bn of lending the Bank guaranteed. The funding benefited 38,000 UK businesses, including around 30,000 businesses the Bank had not previously helped to fund.

British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. It is a development bank wholly owned by HM Government. British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. With the exception of BBB Investment Services Limited they are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority or the Financial Conduct Authority. BBB Investment Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at british-business-bank.co.uk.

The Patient Capital Funds programme is operated by British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc.

British Patient Capital Limited is registered in England and Wales with company number 11271076, and registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

The transaction described above does not constitute or imply any endorsement, warranty or recommendation by the UK government, the British Business Bank plc, its subsidiaries or any other party of Advent Life Sciences or its products or services.

About Advent Life Sciences

Advent Life Sciences is a London-based venture and growth investor focused on building innovative Life Sciences businesses in the UK, Europe and the US. The team combines its long-standing track record of entrepreneurial success with technical scientific expertise to transform breakthrough science into approved medicines or medical products. The firm invests in a range of sectors within life sciences, principally drug discovery, enabling technologies and med tech, with an emphasis on innovative, paradigm-changing approaches. For more information, please visit Adventls.com.

Quick links

Latest news