Next Phase Newsletter

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation; Creator of RESI Conference Series

LSN had to pivot a few weeks ago and create Digital RESI Global Conference. The site remains open and anyone can see the gist of what LSN did on this “live” page. LSN could do this because we have done over 30 physical conferences and never outsourced any part of the conference except the 3^rd party partnering software, to which we added a “matching module” that is unique to LSN. Because we had done our own program guides in the past, we had a lot of the formatting issues conquered for the digital version.  The difficulty at any event is the staff chasing down all the content for the program guide, including speaker bios, marketing collateral and company profiles etc. Always down to the wire.

Digital RESI Global doubled our predicted attendee turnout with investment partners and fundraising CEOs. The metrics are actually quite interesting and surprised us in revealing the pent up demand for action in the life science arena in these troubled times.  Partnering led the way and Panels, Workshops and Company Presentations did remarkably well. I never would have thought that these troubled times would have contributed to a new model that seems to be shifting the paradigm.

By Erich White, Business Development Manager, West Coast, LSN

LSN is pleased to announce that Women In Bio will be joining the RESI Conference Series as a Gold Sponsor for both the Digital RESI partnering event on April 29-30, and Digital RESI conference, June 8-10. Women In Bio plays a vital role in the life sciences, ensuring women founders and first time CEOs have the resources and support needed to grow successful bioscience-related businesses, and providing a forum for women to come together to celebrate and support each other’s success. WIB is partnering with LSN to connect women leading early stage life science companies with global investors and strategic partners. WIB will also sponsor a pitch session during the Digital RESI conference in June, featuring 5 WIB-member companies.

Women In Bio – Engage. Educate. Empower.

Women in Bio/WIB is a US non-profit organization founded in 2002 to support and connect women in the life sciences from the classroom to the board room.

We are an organization of professional women from all career walks in the field of life sciences. We are all volunteers and we all share the goal of enabling and empowering women to reach the highest levels of leadership, and — more importantly — to fulfill their own career aspirations.

We belong to biotech and pharma companies, universities and institutes, law and accounting firms, marketing and PR firms, CROs and CMOs.

WIB’s primary focus is to provide women-to-women mentorship and leadership support through all stages of career development

• from bench to boardroom
• from academia to industry
• from first job to last
• from idea to entrepreneur

With 13 chapters in the US and Canada WIB is committed to fulfill this mission with educational webinars, events, mentoring and networking.

Some of the well-recognized programs are:

Young Women in Bio with STEM education, Executive Women in Bio with the Board Room Ready program.

Many of our members are entrepreneurs, and a focus on entrepreneurship has remained core to WIB’s mission.

With the WIB-Entrepreneur Center we started an entrepreneur focused program dedicated to supporting female founders and first time CEOs from early start-up to later project stages of their life science companies. Besides offering resources, educational webinars as well as mentoring, we engage women founders/CEOs in peer to peer forums and work on the most critical need which is access to capital and corporate partnerships by offering this year in June a Women In Bio sponsored virtual Pitch Challenge in partnership with Life Science Nation (LSN)/RESI.

Donald Kiepert

By Greg Mannix, Chief Conference Officer, Vice President International Business Development, LSN

Greg Mannix

When It became clear that the on-site RESI Europe conference would not be possible due to the Covid-19 crisis and travel restrictions that we are all aware of, many companies had already purchased their registrations.  It was understandable that many of these companies were skeptical when we announced, just 2 weeks before the conference, that we would offer all of the content and live partnering on a digital platform. I wanted to talk to a company that went through this phase of skepticism but decided to give it a try.

Donald R. Kiepert – Executive Chairman & CEO – Experienced CEO, Entrepreneur, and Pharmacist who has started 12 successful life sciences companies. Previous CEO roles at Point Therapeutics (NASDAQ:POTP) and Lantheus Medical Imaging. Currently on two pharmaceutical company boards and one medical device board. Raised $100M at Point with market capitalization value of $500M. Lantheus became a $350M global pharmaceutical company with three products in clinical development. Proven leadership skills, Experience leading drug development programs, FDA interactions, Board creation and management, and partnering and licensing deals.

Greg Mannix:  Seropeutics registered for RESI Europe Paris when it was still slated to take place on March 23rd in the City of Lights. What stage of fundraising is Seropeutics in and what were you looking to accomplish at RESI Paris when you originally registered?

Don Kiepert:  We have raised an angel round (from me) and received several NIH and other grants. We are now pursuing a 25M Series A.

GM:  What was your initial reaction when you heard the conference would no longer take place on-site and would change to a digital format?

DK:  I was concerned because I believe these types of meetings are normally more effective as face to face sessions.

GM:  Did you ask for a refund of your registration fee?

DK:  Yes, my first reaction was to request a refund or a discount.

GM:  Why were you skeptical about a Digital Conference?

DK: I was concerned about the ability of the IT system to operate flawlessly so the meetings could be effective and come off on schedule.

GM:  In the end, you decided to give Digital RESI a try. Were you able to book any meetings? What kinds of meetings did you have?

DK:  We had a total of 16 meetings which were on time and proved to be a highly effective approach.  We met with 6 Pharma company executives, 3 vendor/investor companies, and 7 VC type organizations.

GM:  How did you find the built-in video conferencing platform? Was it possible to have productive meetings on-line?

DK:  There were some minor technical issues but yes, the meetings were effective and productive.

GM:  How many new connections will you be having follow-up meetings or interaction with after the conference is over?

DK:  At this point, we have 6 follow up meetings scheduled.

GM:  Do you think Digital Conferences like this are useful moving forward?

DK:  Absolutely and I plan on attending the next one on 4/29 and 4/30. Like I said, I am a believer in face-to-face meetings, but I can honestly say that our experience at the digital conference was really productive, so we will do it again.

Seropeutics is an early-stage pharmaceutical company that is advancing breakthrough therapies to treat fragile X syndrome (no FDA approved drugs) and other neurological diseases. fragile X will have an orphan drug status. IND is targeted 12-months after program funding.  Seropeutics has developed two distinct first-in-class chemical platforms that precisely and selectively modulate novel combinations of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) receptor types. Safety established in rodents and rhesus monkeys. Pre-clinical proof of concept established in fragile X mice demonstrating prevention of seizures and amelioration of repetitive behaviors and social deficits.