Without backwards compatibility with VB6, there are no good parts of VB.NET. The Visual Basic syntax isn't that great to begin with and VB.NET then added more horrible keywords like `AndAlso` and `OrElse`.
In my opinion, most of that list isn't actually too bad. But it doesn't matter, all the horrors should have been included and then deprecated, giving a smooth upgrade path. Instead all VB6 code had to stay on VB6 as it was no where near 99% compatible. You have a language with different semantics, completely new way of building the UI, and superficial but incomplete syntax similarities. Anyone who was forced to rewrite, and was smart, went to C#.
Heavy Office users that have outgrown VBA and turn to VB.NET to keep doing their little department apps for data analysis without additional help from IT other than getting Visual Studio on their systems.
Also VB.NET gets all the tooling that C++ and C# get, not like the black swan in .NET, F#.
What’s an example of life sciences enterprises
Several examples to pick from.
http://vb.mvps.org/vfred/breaks.asp
It would have been entirely possible to make a CLR version of VB that was 99% compatible with VB6 -- and that's what they should have done. It would have given a clear upgrade path for a huge number of applications. Instead they just re-skinned C#.