Next Phase Newsletter

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

For the week of September 25-29th things will be jumpin’ in the city of Boston! Life Science Nation’s Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Conference takes place on Tuesday September 26th, and several other events are coming to the city as well. So if you are attending RESI Boston, please peruse our list of recommended hotels and get a room booked ASAP.

It is eminently clear to me that Boston will be fully occupied that week. If you are a scientist entrepreneur or a fundraising CEO, check out the early stage investors and strategic partners already signed up to attend RESI. As a born and raised Bostonian, I implore you to not wait any longer – you can get signed up for RESI Boston right here. And once you’ve signed up, save yourself the aggravation and book a room early. The one thing you don’t want when attending a conference in Boston is a tedious commute from outside of city – it can be a challenge even for the well-worn road warriors of life science.

The good news is RESI Boston has an amazing program line up and is likely to be one of the biggest RESI events we’ve ever run. The most dynamic partnering event in healthcare will be hoppin’ as usual.

By Shaoyu Chang, MD, MPH, Director of Research & Asia Business Development Liaison, LSN

An increasing number of Chinese biopharma companies are entering the global stage and changing the dynamics in life science innovations. In 2016, Simcere Pharma made a splash by hosting a life sciences startup competition across East and West coast. This year, not long after Qilu Pharma launched its 25,000 square-feet incubator in Brighton, Luye Pharma also opened its new Boston R&D Center.

As these Chinese firms are setting foot in North America, they typically hire industry veterans with multinational pharma experiences to spearhead their business development efforts. These professional deal-makers not only are equipped with deep domain knowledge, but they develop a unique perspective on cross-border opportunities for biopharma innovators.

At RESI Boston, entrepreneurs are invited to the China Strategic Partners Panel to learn about where market opportunities and challenges are, and how to collaborate with Chinese corporations. The speakers include:

• Larry Cai, Head of Business Development New England, Qilu Pharmaceutical
• Weimin Tang, Interim CEO, Hengrui Therapeutics
• Sean Fu, President, Luye Boston R&D Center, Luye Pharma
• Joyce Pei, Executive Director, Simcere Pharmaceutical
• Yuan-Hua Ding, Senior Director and Head of External R&D Innovation – Asia, Pfizer, Inc.

By Matthew Tosch, Vice President of Sales, LSN
Direct: 617-681-7891 Email: m.tosch@lifesciencenation.com

As any fundraising executive can attest, raising money for their start-up is an arduous process that requires steadfast perseverance. Even with full-time dedication to the task, many companies fall short. It is not for a lack of effort on their part- Life Science Nation has worked with hundreds of executives to help them set themselves up for success. For a limited time, LSN is offering any interested fundraising companies a free consultation on their current fundraising efforts. Topics that we will cover include:

• Best practices for your branding to generate a clear, concise, and investor-centric message
• Identification a “Global Target List” of investors that match your technology and your stage of development
• Setting up your internal infrastructure;
• Explaining why utilizing an administrator or hiring someone on an hourly basis to manage your meeting requests and to follow up with any investor leads is pivotal to your success.

LSN has a few RESI conferences coming up and I personally would like to help you get ready to take advantage of RESI and meet investors and strategic partners. You can contact me to arrange the consult. The consult will be led by a Senior Investment Analyst and a Senior BD Consultant who are experts in the early stage fundraising process. An example of the areas we can address are:

• Feedback on your pitch deck / executive summary
• How to effective canvass and message investors through email and phone exchanges
• What does your “Global Target List” look like
• Heat map of global investors that are a fit for you and should be on your radar

By Jess Rabourn, President, WideTrial

2017 may go down as the “Year of Expanded Access”. Expanded Access Programs (EAPs) are FDA authorized clinical trials for patients who cannot get into regular clinical trials.  The mechanism was created in 1987 to permit seriously ill patients and their doctors to explore new possible treatments that are in clinical development but not yet approved for market. And now, after 30 years of practice, there are major opportunities to use relatively inexpensive EAPs to strengthen clinical drug development in the toughest diseases.

This year, the Trump administration -including HHS and FDA leadership-  plus several elected officials on Capitol Hill, have called for greater power for gravely ill Americans and their doctors to consider pre-approval therapeutics. Drug and device makers around the country are already scrambling to comply with special measures in the new 21st^st Century Cures Act which require companies to publicize their early-access policies. Additional early-access legislation may find its way into the FDA Reauthorization Act before Summer’s end.

At the same time, big initiatives for real world evidence, precision diagnostics, and adaptive clinical trial design are captivating product development teams in the same companies that face demands for early product access. Could these two disparate opportunities be addressed by the same solution?  In the U.S., well-designed Expanded Access programs are finding their way into the drug development process for new products in unsolved, life-threatening diseases. Treating wider sets of patients in a target indication opens the door to vast collection of consented treatment-outcomes data, which are vital for understanding a patient population and the differential response patients may have to an investigational drug, device, or diagnostic.  So how can EAPs be integrated into clinical development, and what needs to change to marry the benefits of access and research?

On September 15, 2017, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, leaders from pharma and biotherapeutics companies, FDA, NIH, and leading advocacy organizations will be brought together to answer these questions.

The 2017 Expanded Access Summit is designed to be a groundbreaking event for drug development. It is produced by WideTrial, a longstanding policy advisor and innovation leader in pre-approval access. WideTrial has tasked its speakers and attendees with establishing new best-practices for modern Expanded Access. Audience participation will be a critical component of the Summit outcomes, which will be compiled, edited, and submitted for publication after the event.

To learn more and take part in this event, register now on the conference website:  http://widetrial.com/

By Lucy Parkinson, Director of Research, LSN

RESI aims to represent a diversity of investment sources for early stage life science companies, beyond traditional venture capital firms and other investors with short-term horizons and, primarily financial aims. It’s therefore fitting that our first RESI Boston panel announcement is the RESI Venture Philanthropy panel. LSN has confirmed five speakers from disease-focused venture capital funds, each of which invests with the primary aim of bringing new treatments to patients in their focus indication area.

The unique outlook of venture philanthropy investors means that each fund has created a distinct strategy for moving new inventions towards patients. They typically have deep domain expertise at their disposal, and many focus on assets at an earlier stage than typical VCs, with the aim of helping new treatments cross over biotech’s infamous ‘Valley of Death’. In this panel, these investors will explain their unique strategies and expertise, and entrepreneurs can learn how to find and work with a venture philanthropy investor in their domain. The participants are:

• David Sandak, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Research, Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure
• Gerard Honig, Translational Research Manager, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation
• Maya Merrell, Director, Business and Partnership Development, Fast Forward, LLC (National MS Society)
• Christopher de Souza, PhD, Director, Broadview Ventures
• Lauren Friedman, Associate Scientific Director, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation

By Michael Quigley, VP of Investor Research, LSN

For early stage and especially for pre-revenue companies, introductory meetings with investors are one of most critical situations that entrepreneurs face. Saying it is important to prepare is an understatement. With this article I aim to provide guidance on what exactly entrepreneurs should understand about a prospective investor before they begin a meeting, the questions they should be asking in the meeting, and how to use that information to guide the conversation and prioritize leads.

The world of life science and healthcare technology is large and differentiated, and so are the investors that allocate to the sector. There are several defining characteristics of a company in this space that ideally should match with what an investor has interest/experience in. It’s important to research an investor’s focus areas in the life science and healthcare space, and understand their outlook as best as possible prior to a meeting. You can think about these key company characteristics in the following way:

1. Sector
   • Therapeutics, Medical Devices, Diagnostics, Healthcare IT, R+D Services
2. Subsector
   • Molecule type/MOA, Type of Device/Diagnostic, Type of/End Users of Software, etc.
3. Indication Area
   • Oncology, Neurology, Orphan diseases, etc.

Understanding the level of comfort and familiarity that the firm and person(s) you are speaking with have with your technology and market can help you steer the conversation in the most productive way possible. For example, if your startup is an oncology company and the investor has invested in a number of oncology therapeutics, then you should prepare to spend a significant amount of your time highlighting your unique approach and diving deep into the science. With an investor less familiar with the oncology marketplace, you might need to spend more time and slides describing the market and competitive landscape. If the investor is not familiar with your space, you will need to spend more time highlighting the problem you are aiming to solve and relatively less on your solution until they recognize and appreciate the significance of the problem.

Other pieces of information you should be looking to gather, more to qualify the investor as a real potential than to guide the conversation, revolve around their typical investment size and stage in terms of dollar amount, Seed Series A,B etc. as well as the clinical development phase you are in or your level of commercial traction. Investors that invest in later stage technologies will often take meetings with earlier stage companies to build relationships for future rounds or to gather intel on what is coming next and by understanding this you are able to understand their likelihood of participating in your current round.

Another key datapoint to consider when dealing with VC or PE fund investors is the fund vintage or the year the fund was raised. Funds that were closed more recently, say within the past 3 years will have more dry powder available while the older funds may down to their last one or two investments before they need to raise their own capital again. You should also look at their historic investments to try and determine if they tend to lead or co-invest. Anyone who has raised capital will tell you that securing the lead is the hardest part. Many investors, particularly with those less experience in your space, will want to see a lead and a term sheet in place before they will commit to an investment.

By doing this research it shows to the investor that you have done your homework. I can’t stress enough how much that really resonates with them. If you expect them to invest millions of dollars into you and your company then they certainly expect you to take the time to become familiar with them and their organization as well. An investment is the start of a long-term relationship, and any strong relationship should be a two-way street.

Finally, and this is the point I see missed most frequently: It’s important to take the first 5-10 minutes of the meeting to go through proper introductions and try to connect on a human level. Investors are often keen to know why the entrepreneur was motivated to start this business and to understand their personal commitment to the startup’s mission. Before you jump into the slides and go through your pitch, ask questions not just about their fund size or indications of interest but also their background, and how they got to be where they are today. At the end of the day, people invest in people. By making the effort to get to know who is on the other end of the phone or table, you may uncover similarities in your past or common goals to connect over, which helps to build trust and a stronger relationship. Taking the time to build this rapport could lead to them helping you in other ways, even if they don’t invest in your current financing round.