By Nono Hu, Senior Manager, Branding & Messaging, LSN

LSN is pleased to announce its inaugural RESI @ TMCx Conference on June 8th, in Houston at the Texas Medical Center, the leader in collaborative medicine.

LSN is bringing more than 300 emerging life science entrepreneurs together with nearly 120 early stage investors from around the world for a full day of panels, workshops and partnering.

Through an expansive series of investor panels, RESI @ TMCx will present current topics covering investment mandates and procedures for identifying and qualifying candidates.  Additionally, RESI’s workshops will provide more in-depth advice on every aspect of the fundraising process.  The RESI Partnering Forum will allow fundraising executives to identify and book up to 16 meetings with life science investors who fit their company’s technology sector and stage of development.

Check out the RESI Program Guide to learn more! We hope to see you in 10 days at the largest medical complex.

 

By Michael Quigley, Director of Research, LSN

As a fundraising entrepreneur, you will likely find yourself engaging in initial face-to-face meetings with investors, whether at a conference, coffee shop, or in an office. Given the time constraints inherent in these kinds of meetings, it is crucial that you have a plan in place in order to get as much as possible out of them. What follows are suggestions for how best to manage one of these conversations.

In terms of what to bring for materials, a simple, cogent pitch deck made up of 10–12 slides can be a fantastic tool. However, before you even begin to present the first slides, you need to validate a fit between the investor and your company. This should be done in two steps:

1. Deliver a three- to five-sentence elevator pitch that addresses who you are, the space you are working in, and what differentiates you from your competitors.

2. Ask the investor to return the favor, so you can gain an understanding of their firm and what they are looking for in potential investments.

With this information both of you will be able to determine whether further dialogue would be of value within the first few minutes of the meeting. Additionally, you will be able to determine what specifically the investor might find interesting about your opportunity, which you can then emphasize later in your conversation.

Once you have both introduced yourselves and your goals (and hopefully identified fit), you can begin to walk the investor through your pitch deck. Particularly in this time-pressed type of scenario, you should keep the slides very simple. View them as a visual prompt for spontaneous conversation, rather than a script to read word for word. Remember that you can always send the investor more information via email, and that if they are interested, they will likely be asking for additional materials.

However, the slides should definitely address:

• The market need for your product
• The technology you are developing, and its origin and differentiating factors (provide a clear description)
• Your strongest supporting data
• The management team
• Current partnerships
• The status of IP
• Financials, including historic spending, current needs, and future use of funds
• Exit environment/strategy

Do not simply rattle off all of these details as the investor stares and nods. It is crucial for you to foster a dialogue to ensure that the investor is able to follow what you are saying and grasp your value proposition. By allowing for back-and-forth communication, you can identify and address any potential objections. Hopefully, if the investor is genuinely interested, they will ask you questions that will help direct the conversation. You should be comfortable enough with your slides that you can jump from one to another as the dialogue branches out.

After you have gone through the basic introductions and elaborated on your opportunity using your pitch deck, you should directly gauge the investor’s interest. The best way to do this is to be up front and ask whether your opportunity is something they would be interested in pursuing further. If the answer is yes, ask about the investor’s process and timeline for moving forward. Determine a firm follow-up date and whether there are any additional materials they would like to receive. If the answer is no, try to understand why. Is it too early in the development process? Perhaps they would be worth contacting later down the line. Aggregating a list of negative and positive responses can help you better understand your company’s inherent strengths and weaknesses and plan for the future.

Ideally you should close the meeting with a reminder of your main differentiating factor: that which makes your opportunity stand out from those of your competitors. Repeating your core value proposition at the end of the dialogue helps to solidify that message with the investor, so that when they think back on the conversation, it is what they will remember. Successfully navigating investor meetings, especially when they are brief or occur spontaneously, may take practice, but if you stay the course and follow these tips, you can become nimble and flexible, and have a higher chance of developing meaningful relationships.

By Shaoyu Chang, MD, MPH,  Senior Research Analyst, LSN

The immuno-oncology field is seeing high-profile deals and increasing media attention.  We have therefore used the LSN company database to analyze a sample of biotech companies working in this field. Cancer immunotherapies harness the power of the immune system to target malignant cells. Unlike traditional approaches to cancer such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy, these emerging technologies hold the promise of precise therapeutic effects while leaving the rest of the body unharmed. These products’ clinical benefits are impressive, and so is their financial performance. In 2014 alone, cancer immunotherapy drugs have generated about $41.0 billion in the United States, accounting for nearly 50% of the overall oncology drug market (1).

With more than 30,000 company profiles, LSN’s company platform provides a bird’s eye view of the global early stage biotech and medtech R&D landscape. Our search in the LSN company platform yielded 522 unique companies that are currently developing at least one cancer immunotherapy product. About one-fifth (119) of them are publicly listed, while the rest are private or subsidiary companies. Cancer immunotherapy R&D has become a global phenomenon with the United States as the leader in terms of number of companies, followed by China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada, as shown in Figure 1.

There are three major categories of cancer immunotherapies: cytokines and immunomodulation agents; monoclonal antibodies; and cell-based therapies. We further analyzed our sample of the 522 companies, and the breakdown of their technologies is shown in Figure 2.

 

The original pioneers in cancer immunotherapy utilized cytokines such as interleukins and interferons to stimulate immune response against cancer. This is a broad-stroke approach that causes a response that’s often non-specific and therefore frequently leads to dangerous side effects. In recent years, newer, more sophisticated immune stimulation and modulation pathways have been explored, in an attempt to limit these side effects and increase efficacy.

In terms of commercialized products, monoclonal antibodies remain the mainstay of cancer immunotherapy. These biologic drugs can act either as carrier to deliver chemotherapy drugs to targeted sites, as inducer for an immune attack on a tumor, or as inhibitor of key biological pathways in cancer cells. Many major pharmaceutical companies are actively securing a strategic position in this field(2).

Cell-based therapies have attracted the most media attention with a number of highly visible public companies. In general terms, these technologies involve collecting immune cells, such as T cells or dendritic cells, from a patient with cancer. The harvested cells are reprogrammed through genetic engineering or peptide and adjuvant stimulation. Activated immune cells are equipped with the ability to recognize and kill cancer cells and are then reintroduced to the same patient to treat the disease. This approach is highly specific and has platform potential so long as appropriate tumor antigens are available.

Many of the above technologies can be referred to as ‘therapeutic vaccines’—induction or augmentation of immune responses against existing diseases. A significant minority of cancer immunotherapy companies are developing ‘prophylactic vaccines’ that aim to prevent cancers from developing in the first place. Their R&D efforts are concentrated in specific fields such as cervical cancer (HPV), liver cancer (hepatitis viruses), and gastric cancer (H. pylori). Many other cancer immunotherapy companies are exploring various areas including adjuvant technologies, tumor antigen discovery platforms, and nucleic acid-based vaccines.

Public awareness of cancer immunotherapy has increased as it enters regular clinical practice and mainstream news channels. However, we should caution that many of these technologies are still experimental, especially cell-based therapies. It remains to be seen how these therapies will help patients on a large scale. The LSN team will keep you updated as we closely monitor trends in this field.

1. PRNewswire. Global & USA Cancer Immunotherapy Market Analysis to 2020 – Analysis and Forecasts for the $41 Billion Market. Apr 10, 2015.
2. Press Release. Celgene Corporation Enters into Strategic Immuno-Oncology Collaboration with AstraZeneca to Develop PD-L1 Inhibitor Program for Patients with Serious Blood Cancers. MarketWatch. Apr 24, 2015.