RESI Europe in Paris will feature two tracks of investor panels that include specialized topics relevant to current industry trends, such as Seed Funds, Big Pharma, AI in Healthcare and Oncology Innovation. RESI Panels are focused on an audience of entrepreneurs seeking to raise funding and make strategic relationships. LSN recruits panelists from our extensive network of investors in different categories, who are actively looking to make investments in early-stage life science and healthcare sectors. The panelists will have advice to share with startup CEOs on how to get through the process, get into dialogue, and secure funding or make a deal.
If you’re interested in hearing and meeting active industry experts, it’s not too late to register now!
Here are some of the panelists who will be joining our panels at RESI Europe in Paris:
Alexandra Bause
Partner Apollo Health Ventures
Alizée Cres
Principal BD & Strategy MITG EMEA Medtronic
Yuwen Liu
Founding Partner BOHE Angel Fund
Benedikt Luhmann
Principal – Healthcare VI Partners
Chris Church
Manager, Search & Evaluation, CVRM AstraZeneca
Corinne Venot
Sr. Director, BD Beigene
Diana Saraceni
Founder, Managing Director Panakes Partners
Guillermo Yudowski
Principal Investigator, EPIU Biogen
Jonas Jendi
Investment Manager Industrifonden
Katherine Cohen
Venture Partner Panacea Ventures
Kevin Johnson
Founding Partner Medicxi Ventures
Martin Pfister
Sr. Investment Manager: Life Sciences High-Tech Gründerfonds
Murali Gopalakrishnan
Sr. Director, Head Search & Evaluation Neuroscience AbbVie
Olaf Koenig
Director, International Bd Amgen
Olivier Nosjean
Research Scientific Director Servier
Paolo Pio
Managing Director Joyance Partners
Sofia Ioannidou
Partner Andera Partners
Stefan Luzi
Partner Gilde Healthcare Partners
Thibaut Roulon
Investment Director (Bioam & InnoBio) bpifrance
Thierry Laugel
Managing Partner Kurma Partners
Tom Willis
Partner Illumina Ventures
Victor Tong
Partner Decheng Capital
Walter Stockinger
Managing Partner Hadean Ventures
Wieger Vos
Corporate Strategy, Healthcare KPN Ventures
By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation; Creator of RESI Conference Series
LSN business development teams spend a lot of time at various bio clusters and technology hubs around the world. In the last week, my team visited two hubs in the Netherlands to deliver our free Fundraising Bootcamp, and we are planning more visits to Europe tech hubs soon.
The more I travel around the planet the more similarities I see in the approach tech hubs take with their early stage company training strategy. I see that unanimously they are focused on getting a rational business plan to present to partners and investors. In order to accomplish this task they have hired Entrepreneurs In Residence and developed training programs. We have written before about the LSN training program fundraising training program Focus on Cures (FOC) and where it fits in the early stage of identifying potential partners and teaching how to reach out. LSN has found that FOC is augmenting and complementary with almost all of the tech hub strategies for partnering. You can learn more about how FOC is different here.
In many aspects getting a business plan around early stage technology assets is a great challenge. A company needs to be thorough and in context in a fast changing arena on many different levels. LSN offers training in a complementary skillset: the LSN mantra is to find all the folks you should be in dialogue with and start that dialogue no matter where you are at in the development cycle from idea to clinical stages. When you start a dialogue and begin relationships, the data elements needed for the business plan will fall out of the relationship.
LSN is the early view of talking about your company’s technology and team. It is not about market segments and reimbursement strategies – those will happen immediately after some validation with the existing programs already in place. LSN will posit that the partners in the early stage technology arena are more interested in trying to determine if the management team can be vetted and parsed for their ability to execute and move the technology forward. After the technology is vetted and partners surface around a table, that’s when formal business plans evolve.
A firm based in Taiwan is managing a healthcare fund that invests in several sectors within healthcare. The firm generally participates in Series A or B rounds and prefers a clear exit in less than 5 years. The firm is open to both leading and co-investing. Typical equity investments range from US$2-10M. The firm currently focuses 60% on Taiwan-based deals and 40% on China- and US-based deals.
The firm considers therapeutics and medical devices. Within therapeutics, the firm is open to all modalities including small molecules, biologics, cell therapy and gene therapy with a focus on cancer therapies. The firm would also consider R&D services, healthcare services, and healthcare IT products such as EMR management software. The firm seeks to invest in venture stage companies in Series A or B rounds.
The fund is looking for strong management teams with business background and a successful track record. The firm typically requests a board seat in their portfolio company. The firm collaborates with some of the top healthcare VC firms in Greater China and prefers companies that have a presence, or plan to establish one, in Taiwan.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.
A venture arm of a large corporation is a stage-agnostic investor, and makes investments from Series B to growth stage. Investments are therefore varied in size relative to the type of investment; initial allocations are most often from $5-10 million with the possibility of follow-on investments up to $20 million. The firm is open to opportunities worldwide but has previously focused on investing in the USA, Canada and Europe.
The firm focuses on four areas of innovation in healthcare; pharma services, data and analytics, digital supply chain, consumer health, value based care.
The firm is focused on financial returns in addition to how the parent corporation can potentially contribute value to the company.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.
A holding company of a large Japanese corporation focuses on healthcare as one of their main areas of interest. The mission of their venture group and corporate venture capital arm is to foster innovation across the group by investing in and partnering with strategic startups. In principle, the corporate venture capital arm is open to global opportunities and is geography and stage agnostic, but has specific preferences depending on the technology sector.
Healthcare/Medical is one of the major focus areas of the firm. The corporate venture capital arm is interested therapeutics solutions such as solutions beyond the pill (digital therapeutics) and around the pill (delivery systems etc). Therapeutics areas of interest are CNS, Autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases, regenerative medicine, Aging related solutions and Vaccines. The corporate venture capital arm is also interested in diagnostics solutions based on genomics, metagenomics, metabolomics, healthcare ICT (biosensors etc), and medical big data. Furthermore, medical devices for wound care, bone cement and hospital related infection treatment is also is an area of interest and is open to all classes of medical devices including 510k and PMA.
This corporate venture arm has a close, collaborative relationship with their group’s other active healthcare businesses and can also present opportunities to the pharma branch, CRO, CDMO branches as appropriate.
The firm is a flexible investor and does not require companies to have a Japan-centric angle. For medical device & digital therapeutics opportunities, the group does prefer technologies with strong promise in the US market. The venture group has a close relationship with all other business operations within the corporation, and can actively support companies by leveraging these relationships. For example, the group can help with Japan market entry and clinical trials through their business arm that specializes in clinical trials, with established CRO, CDMO, ICT services.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.
A major financial institution based in Western Europe is focused on life sciences. The firm both invests in venture capital funds and makes direct investments in seed-stage and early-stage companies. Typically the firm invests EUR 0.5-3 million initially, with further capital reserved for follow-on rounds. The firm primarily invests in France, but will consider opportunities in other areas of Europe.
The firm is interested in opportunities in biotech and medical devices, and may potentially invest in digital health. The firm is not interested in diagnostics. The firm has a broad interest in early stage therapeutics, including small molecules, biologics, cell and gene therapies, and all indication areas including cardiovascular, neurology, and rare diseases. The firm is open to investing in repurposed drugs. The firm invests from preclinical-stage companies through to Phase II.
The firm prefers to invest in companies based in France, but will consider opportunities elsewhere in Europe: within France the firm is typically a lead investor, but in other regions The firm prefers to be a follow-on investor. The firm focuses on investing in companies which have also received an investment from a VC that the firm is invested in.
If you are interested in more information about this investor and other investors tracked by LSN, please email mandates@lifesciencenation.com.
– By Greg Mannix, VP of International Business Development, LSN
Greg Mannix
RESI has recently added an all-day pitch track in which entrepreneurs can deliver their short presentation to an investor audience and get instant feedback and questions from investors. In January at RESI SF, Altrix Bio was selected as one of the pitch session finalists. You can now apply to pitch at RESI Europe. You can also apply for a poster spot in the RESI Innovation Challenge.
Nancy Briefs, CEO of Altrix Bio
trategic business leader with extensive experience creating value, driving strategy and launching product commercialization in diverse life science companies. Deep general management and fundraising expertise having raised over $500 M in equity including IPO. Innovative, collaborative and entrepreneurial, strong communicator and tenacious. Energized by turning innovation into commercial reality, working with creative scientists, and communicating value to partners and investors.
Greg Mannix: Nancy, congratulations on being a finalist in the first ever Featured Company Pitch Session dedicated to women CEOs. What are your thoughts on this focus?
Nancy Briefs: I think it was timely and important. Especially being in California, one of the first places to really push for more diversity. I thought it was a refreshing change!
GM: What can be done to increase gender diversity in leadership roles at life sciences companies?
NB: I think a lot of women fall off the path between senior management positions and the C-suite, partly because of family commitments and other factors. Another thing might be the lack of role models to look up to when they are coming up the corporate ladder. And finally, it doesn’t help that the large majority of investors are also men, and are probably more prone to invest in people that look like them. Events like this RESI pitch session dedicated to women in CEO roles, which gives visibility to women role models and successful leaders, is a good thing. It is a fact that women make most of the healthcare decisions in their families, so it would seem to make sense that they play a more prominent role in healthcare companies.
GM: How did the Pitch Session go?
NB: It was well attended; I think there were 100 to 120 people in the auditorium. The moderator did a good job keeping everyone on schedule. It was a well run session.
GM: And how did you do in this new pitch format at RESI?
NB: Really well! I love to pitch and we got really positive feedback from several people. We got great visibility for the company and two of the investors in the audience reached out to me afterward. We are currently in conversations with them, so we are pleased with the result.
GM: Why do you think Altrix got traction with investors?
NB: I think Type 2 diabetes it is such a huge global problem, and our solution LuCI™ AJN 003 is an elegant drug without any systemic effects. That is important for the 50% of patients who do not reach glycemic control. And our experienced team really knows what it will take to get us through Phase II clinical trials. Also, Dennis Ford (Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation; Creator of RESI Conference Series), who we’ve been working with on our fundraise, really helped us focus our story. That made a difference as well.
GM: So you would pitch again at RESI?
NB: You bet!
AltrixBio has developed LuCI™, a novel substance that transiently coats the GI mucosa to block nutrient absorption, independent of the pH environment, temporarily mimicking the effects of Gastric Bypass (RYGB). LuCI is comprised of a sucrose octasulfate aluminum complex engineered into a complex coacervate formulation linked via pH-independent electrostatic interactions. When exposed to gastrointestinal fluid, LuCI forms a sticky paste that binds to the mucosa to form a coating on the site of GI tract. LuCI 1) can be orally administered, 2) rapidly binds to the luminal surface of the stomach, duodenum, and small intestine, 3) forms a continuous barrier coating to block nutrient contact, 4) has shown in vivo efficacy in a rodent model to significantly lower postprandial glucose response, and 5) has shown no systemic absorption or toxicity, thus minimizing the risk profile. Furthermore, by adjusting viscosity and dosing of the drug, we can alter duration of exposure, thus creating a family of drug formulations to coat the intestine and alter glucose homeostasis for different periods of time. The company is advancing AJN 003 for the treatment of type 2 Diabetes. Additionally, LuCI’s unique attributes may provide an ideal platform for delivery of drugs to the GI tract.
