Bali Muralidhar

Bali Muralidhar is Global Head of Life Sciences and CIO at Abingworth, where he leads the firm’s transatlantic venture and clinical co-development investment teams and chairs Abingworth’s investment committees. Abingworth describes him as having more than 20 years of healthcare experience across venture investing, R&D, clinical practice, and teaching.

He joined Abingworth as a London-based Partner in April 2019. In December 2020, Abingworth promoted him to Managing Partner, noting that he had driven recent investments in Reneo Pharmaceuticals, NuCana, Spruce Biosciences, and Exicure, and served on those boards as well as Gynesonics. In January 2026, Abingworth announced that Muralidhar, then Managing Partner, CIO, and COO, had been appointed Head of Abingworth Life Sciences and CIO.

Before Abingworth, Muralidhar was a Senior Partner at MVM Partners LLP in London, where he completed investments in and served on boards of public and private healthcare companies. Earlier, he was a member of Bain Capital’s healthcare deal team. In 2018, Financial News named him one of its Rising Stars in Private Equity.

Muralidhar trained as a physician-scientist. He obtained a clinical medicine degree from the University of Oxford, practiced general surgery at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, and earned a PhD in translational cancer research from the MRC Cancer Cell Unit at the University of Cambridge. He was also a Bye-Fellow in Medical Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge, where he taught pathology, surgery, and medicine.

• Abingworth’s stated strategy is to invest “at all stages of product development across multiple disease areas,” with a portfolio driven by patients in need and opportunities to develop and commercialize important new treatment options.
• For venture investments, Abingworth’s typical check is $15 million-$30 million total per company, with a 3-8 year holding period and a primary US/Europe geographic focus.
• For seed and early-stage companies, Abingworth emphasizes company creation and active support beyond capital: academic licensing, science and business strategy, senior-management recruiting, and company incubation.
• For development-stage investing, the firm backs later-stage public and private life sciences companies, including VIPEs: undervalued, usually sub-$200 million market-cap US or European biotechs needing financing and active VC board support.
• For clinical co-development, Abingworth provides non-dilutive, asset-based financing for pivotal-stage clinical programs, typically Phase 3-ready or pivotal assets with a high probability of approval and commercialization.
• In Cytospire’s 2026 Series A announcement, Muralidhar described Abingworth as a founding investor and said the firm is a “strong believer” in gamma-delta T-cell therapies.