Dr. Karl Nägler

Karl joined Wellington Partners as a Managing Partner in January 2020. He brings a strong track record of investments in early and later stage life science companies as well as deep sector knowledge and an extensive global network from over 20 years of industry experience. Since joining Wellington Partners, he has been responsible for the new WPLS-V investments in ImCheck, MinervaX and Creative Balloons and has taken over responsibility for Confo Therapeutics, UroMems and SIRS Therapeutics.

Previously, Karl was a Partner at Gimv, a Belgian publicly-listed private equity and venture capital investment firm, where he had been responsible for life science investments within Gimv’s Health & Care team, since 2011. He began his professional career in 2001 at Atlas Venture in London and Munich, and in 2009 joined Ventech, a Paris-based venture capital firm focused on Europe and China, as a Partner.

During his 20 years in the industry, Karl was instrumental in creating, financing and growing many European early and later stage companies, several of them with highly profitable exits including Breath Therapeutics (acquired by Zambon), Covagen (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), Prosonix (acquired by Circassia Pharmaceuticals), Themis (acquired by MSD), Nitec Pharma (merged with Horizon Pharma) and U3 Pharma (acquired by Daiichi Sankyo). He also served on the boards of those companies.

Before joining the industry, Karl was a research fellow in molecular neuroscience at the Max-Planck/CNRS Group, Center for Neurochemistry, in Strasbourg. He holds a PhD in molecular neurobiology from Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, and a Diploma in Biology from Free University of Berlin.