Erik Digman Wiklund

Erik Digman Wiklund is the chief executive officer of Circio Holding, a biotechnology company developing a platform to express genes using circular RNA. A molecular biologist by training, with a PhD from Aarhus University and the Garvan Institute, he is a scientific co-discoverer of human circular RNA and has spent more than a decade across research, finance, and business development in pharma and biotech, including roles at the radiopharmaceutical company Algeta (acquired by Bayer), Aker BioMarine, and McKinsey & Company.

Wiklund appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Edwin Stone, CEO of the cell-therapy manufacturing company Cellular Origins, for a conversation on raising capital in a difficult biotech funding environment. Both had recently closed financings, and Wiklund offered a candid view of what worked and what didn’t.

His central critique was that investors and big pharma move in herds, piling capital into whatever modality is in vogue, in-vivo CAR-T at the moment, while leaving promising but unfashionable science to dry up. He likened it to the PD-1 wave that produced a dozen approvals but only a few real returns, and warned that platform technologies, like Circio’s, have fallen out of favor with venture investors who now want a single clean asset.

Rather than force-fit his platform into an asset-centric venture capitalist pitch, Wiklund took Circio public, raising the capital to build the platform on its own terms. He also pointed to a structural shift he expects to accelerate: as US regulatory certainty wavers and costs climb, more first-in-human clinical development will move to China, where pathways are faster and cheaper.