On a mis­sion to sup­port 'un­der­served' Eu­ro­pean star­tups, Panakès Part­ners dips in­to the biotech sec­tor with its lat­est fund

Di­ana Saraceni knows how to put to­geth­er a VC fund. Af­ter co-found­ing Italy-based Panakès Part­ners back in 2015, the man­ag­ing part­ner is now clos­ing the sixth fund of her ca­reer — but this time, her firm is dip­ping in­to the biotech sec­tor.

Panakès un­veiled its sec­ond fund on Tues­day morn­ing, with $180 mil­lion (€150 mil­lion) from a slate of in­vestors an­chored by EIF and the Fund of Funds man­aged by CDP Ven­ture Cap­i­tal SGR. This raise, dubbed the Pur­ple Fund, will fo­cus on ear­ly-stage life sci­ences com­pa­nies in Eu­rope and specif­i­cal­ly Italy — ar­eas which Panakès says are “un­der­served.”

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