Justin Duckworth

Justin Duckworth is a life-sciences investor and operator currently serving as Co-Founder and CEO of Transimmune AG. Transimmune states that he founded the company and became CEO in 2022, after a 22-year career as a healthcare venture capitalist. The company is headquartered in Düsseldorf and is a Yale University spin-out initially funded by QureInvest.

Before moving into the CEO role at Transimmune, Duckworth was Managing General Partner of the QureInvest Fund, an entrepreneurial investment fund managed by HS LifeSciences. He was also involved in corporate development for QureInvest portfolio companies Ethris and Transimmune. Ethris lists him as a board member and Managing Partner at HS Life Sciences.

Earlier in his career, Duckworth was a partner in the team at Nomura Phase4 Ventures, worked with HBM Partners in Zurich, and worked at Dresdner Kleinwort Capital in London. He studied biochemistry at Oxford University and is an ACA, a qualification of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

QureInvest was launched by HS LifeSciences in 2009 as a specialist biotech investment fund with CHF 27.5 million in initial capital from private investors. The fund was created to finance early biotech companies outside the traditional multi-round venture model and to help management teams shape development programs around pharmaceutical-industry partnering.

• Invests in early-stage biotech and medical-innovation companies, especially those built around novel technologies or research-stage products.
• QureInvest’s stated approach is “strictly market-driven” value creation in biotechnology, linking science and business development from the start.
• The fund aims to provide capital independent of traditional venture capital and help companies find commercialization paths by tailoring programs to the needs of pharmaceutical partners.
• QureInvest has targeted “multi-million dollar investments” that advance companies to a point where they can attract a pharmaceutical partner.
• Duckworth’s later operating work at Transimmune reflects a preference for platform biology grounded in strong translational science, especially immunology, dendritic-cell biology, mRNA vaccination, oncology, infectious disease, and autoimmunity.
• In Transimmune’s 2023 Gates Foundation funding announcement, Duckworth framed the company’s scientific goal as closing the gap between vaccine-mediated immunity and natural immunity by using mRNA to reprogram clinically potent dendritic cells ex vivo.