Next Phase Newsletter

A Life Sciences investment firm in the USA is raising an impact-focused fund with an expected first close of $50M USD in late 2023, to target life sciences companies addressing critical health disparities in the US and globally. 

The firm leverages venture creation and private equity strategies to create nimble and focused pre-seed to seed-stage companies with aligned interests, providing resources and expertise that allow these companies to develop quickly. This also includes externalizing undervalued assets that meet its thesis in public and late-stage platform companies for rapid development.  

The investment size is within the $5M-10M range across an investment cycle, and the firm anticipates deploying 3-5 companies within the next year. 
 
The firm will consider therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices that advance health equity. The firm does not consider digital health. Within therapeutics, the firm is modality-agnostic and looks at technologies from Pre-clinical to Phase 2. Within diagnostics and medical devices, the firm is opportunistic and looks at technologies in development and clinical phases. The firm is open to all indications that address the needs of underserved minorities. 
 
The firm adopts a case-by-case approach, so has no preliminary requirements of the management team. The firm prefers to lead its early rounds and require board seating. 
 
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com. 

A venture capital firm with offices in the US and Western Europe is backed by an investment team where everyone has a scientist or medical background. The firm solely invests in therapeutics companies in Seed and Series A rounds. The firm is currently investing from their inaugural global fund – typical check size is up to $8M USD for the first round and may reserve for subsequent rounds. The firm can participate in leading investments or co-investing. 
 
The firm solely invests in specialty therapeutics areas with significant clinical unmet needs. Within therapeutics, the firm is open to all modalities and diseases including orphan diseases. The company needs to be at least 2 years from or in the clinical trial stages. 
 
The firm continues to support the company thus requires taking a board seat, however the firm does not have specific management team requirements. 
 
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.

By Greg Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, General Manager Europe, LSN

RESI is back to an in-person format with a hybrid digital component, and the feedback from exhibitors at our recent conferences has been amazing. The opportunity to engage potential customers from the 300+ early-stage companies that attend RESI, plus the brand visibility, make RESI ideal for service providers catering to these companies developing technologies in drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health.              ​​​​

Tomorrow is the last day to benefit from Super Earlybird pricing for the upcoming RESI Boston September 18th conference at the Boston Park Plaza. Reach out to one of our BD team members to reserve your spot or for more information.

Past RESI Sponsors and Exhibitors

Life Science Nation Business Development Team
International	East Coast (USA) & China	Midwest (USA) & Canada	West Coast  (USA)
Greg Mannix Vice President International Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Candice He VP, Business Development & Global Investment Strategist Book a Meeting Email Me	Antoinette Lowre Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me	Cameron Hurlburt Manager of Business Development Book a Meeting Email Me

By Karen Deyo, Director of Product, Israel BD, LSN

We are excited to announce our summer webinar schedule! This summer, we will be featuring many sessions on diverse topics that can give companies valuable information on how to increase exposure, in the session on Preparing for the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge, and improving their messaging, in the Marketing, Writing Style & Campaign Content session.

LSN’s CEO, Dennis Ford, will be holding a special 3-week webinar series, with one session a week offering valuable insights for first-time entrepreneurs on how to transition from a scientist to a successful entrepreneur with the webinars, First Time CEOs, Launching Your Startup and It All Starts With A Story. Make sure to mark your calendars through the links below and join us for these exciting sessions! 

By Love Chung, Investor Research Analyst, LSN

RESI Boston September will take place in person at the Boston Park Plaza on September 18th, followed by 2 days of virtual partnering on September 19th – 20th. Included will be seven investor panels that provide experts’ insights on trending topics in the life sciences.  

We will be introducing two new investor panels at RESI Boston September: Synthetic Biology and Strategic Partners. The successful Women’s Health panel will also be brought back from the recent RESI Boston June. Make sure to register by TOMORROW, Friday, June 30 for Super Early Bird tickets to save $500! Check out the panel topics below: 

By Caitlin Dolegowski, Marketing Manager, LSN

Redefining Early Stage Investments (RESI) Boston June presented by Life Science Nation (LSN) took place in-person at the Westin Copley Plaza on June 5, followed by two-days of virtual partnering on June 6-7. This hybrid event was another RESI success! With over 800 attendees representing over 30 countries across 5 continents, RESI was truly a global event. Almost 50% of participants were active life science investors and the other 50% were made up of mostly early-stage startups, as well as tech hubs and service providers.

The main event at RESI is always partnering, and RESI Boston June hosted 1500+ partnering meetings. Our onsite partnering tables were full during the in-person event and partnering continued virtually for the next two days. The feedback from our attendees is clear, that hybrid is the new way post pandemic, and LSN is committed to offering the hybrid format to expand the partnering opportunities for the RESI community.

Partnering is supplemented at our in-person conference with Investor Panels, the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge and Sponsor Workshops. This conference featured seven investor panels curated in an effort to focus on the dynamic life science ecosystem. Panel topics included the tried-and-true RESI staples, such as Corporate Venture Capital, Big Pharma and Medtech Strategics and in addition presented some focused panels like Women’s Health and Cell & Gene Therapy. LSN is always updating and sourcing active life science investors and the dedication to this work makes for a diverse lineup of seasoned RESI-regular investors as well as new investors.

The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) consisted of 56 companies! Pitching companies showcased their technology posters in the exhibit hall and each participating company pitched to a panel of industry experts and active investors by sector. RESI Boston June had 14 sessions in total and Life Science Nation is excited for this increasing turnout in the IPC and the opportunity for the early-stage companies to network and present with relevant investors. Three companies collected the most “RESI cash” a currency exclusive to RESI distributed to attendees to “invest” in the innovation compelling to them. Congratulations to Thrive Bioscience on their first-place finish, Clinials in second and Untech finishing Third.

A thank you to our sponsors for their support of the RESI conference and hosting workshops geared to our RESI community. RESI sponsors highlighted their services and educated attendees during workshops. Our sponsors provided insight into Negotiating Term Sheets, Company Valuation for Fundraising, Maximizing Pre-clinical Development Success for VC-Backed Startups Through CRO Partnerships and IP Considerations for Start-Ups.

LSN had two exciting announcements for the RESI community that made their debut at RESI Boston June. We are happy to announce the debut of a free, daily, newsletter, LifeSci StartUp, will contain the most up-to-date news, information, tools, and more for and about U.S.-based life sciences startups, brought to you in partnership with Big4Bio beginning in July. Additionally, LSN will be launching our newest product, the “Global Partnering Campaign (GPC), Fundraising & Licensing Partner Roadshow Management” a leading-edge platform that integrates LSN’s Investor and Licensing Partner Database and the Salesforce CRM. LSN customized this platform, leveraging years of experience as a broker/dealer helping early-stage life sciences companies attract capital and says it will be a game changer for early-stage startups seeking between $100K and $50M (seed-series B).

The show must go on and LSN is already prepping for RESI Boston September 18-20. RESI will return to Boston in-person on Monday, September 18 at the Boston Park Plaza, followed by two-days of virtual partnering, September 19-20. Register by June 30 to save with super early bird rates.

Sarah Issa

Interview with Sarah Issa, PhD VP of Marketing, Inova By Gregory Mannix, Vice President International Business Development, General Manager Europe, LSN

Gregory Mannix

Gregory Mannix (GM): What is the genesis behind the Biotech Perspective survey?

Sarah Issa (SI): This survey is one of our many efforts to make biopharma partnering more transparent and accessible. There is a clear gap between expectations and reality when it comes to ideal partnerships across all partnering phases: Find, Deal, Alliance. This project was a way to explore our initial assumptions from the biotech perspective as well as learn trends and insights around the current partnering landscape.

GM: How many years has the survey been running?

SI: After the successful launch of the pilot survey in 2022 and resulting report, this year will be the second time we run it.

GM: What kind of results has Inova been seeing?

SI: We had more than 100 biotechs reveal their preferred deal structures, their most common pain points, and rank the world’s largest pharma companies for the quality of their partnering experience. The report has been downloaded more than 800 times so far and the feedback from the readers has been very positive.

Main overall insights:

• Overall satisfaction with partnerships and partnering has increased over the last 5 years.
• 78% of biopharma companies rely primarily on conferences to connect with partners.
• Matching is increasingly difficult: Biotech struggles to find partners, top pharma accepts just 20% of conference meeting requests.

Most selected pain points:

• In the Find phase: Contacting the appropriate person (61%)
• In the deal phase: Misaligned expectations (42%)
• In the alliance management phase: Long or unclear timelines (42%)

GM: Could you share a link of 2022 results with our readers?

SI: The report is available for free on the website à https://go.inova.io/partnering-2030-the-biotech-perspective-2022

GM: What do you hope to gather from this 2023 survey?

SI: In 2023, we want to delve deeper into the main trends we saw in 2022 around the earlier stages of partnering, notably how and where to find a partner, with a focus on partnering congresses.

GM: Is the target audience the same or broader?

SI: The survey is still destined for companies with assets to partner in the biopharma sector and we are accepting participants from across the board (platform/tech, small molecule, medical device, digital health…)

GM: How do you plan to use and publish this 2023 data?

SI: The participant information remains anonymous, we plan on analyzing the results and publishing the report in Q4, distributing it across different channels for the industry. We’ll also be doing a webinar to discuss the results and trends and will invite the highest rating pharma company to share their best practices.

GM: What is Inova’s long-term goal?

SI: At Inova, our mission is to help bring science to life by connecting the right partners and accelerating the partnering process. With our industry-leading CRM, and now, a rapidly growing number of biotechs on our network, we are committed to becoming the leading biopharma match-making platform. By bringing sourcing and execution together, our goal is to offer a holistic solution to partnering, rendering it more effective, faster, cheaper, and accessible to everyone.