Life Science Nation is excited to announce that registration is now open for RESI JPM 2027, taking place January 11–12 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, followed by three days of virtual partnering on January 13, 18, and 19.
Held alongside the world’s largest gathering of healthcare investors, executives, and innovators during JPM Week, RESI JPM provides early-stage life science companies with a unique opportunity to raise capital, build strategic partnerships, and accelerate business development in one of the industry’s most active networking environments.
Previous RESI JPM conferences welcomed more than 1,000 attendees, including over 600 active investors, strategic partners, pharmaceutical business development professionals, and industry leaders. The conference combines curated educational programming with one-on-one partnering meetings, creating meaningful opportunities for fundraising companies to connect directly with the investors and partners best aligned with their technologies.
The expanded format begins with two full days of in-person programming at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, featuring investor panels, educational workshops, the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge, networking events, poster presentations, and partnering meetings. The conference then continues online with three additional days of virtual partnering, allowing participants to maximize the number of meetings they can schedule while extending networking opportunities beyond the in-person event.
Whether you are seeking Seed, Series A, or Series B financing, exploring strategic partnerships, licensing opportunities, or looking to expand your visibility within the life science investment community, RESI JPM offers multiple ways to engage. Registration options are available for startups, fundraising executives, service providers, technology hubs, exhibitors, and qualified investors.
Early Bird registration is now available, offering substantial savings on five-day hybrid registration for startups and fundraising executives. Register early to lock in the lowest available rates.
Organizations looking to maximize their visibility during JPM Week can also take advantage of sponsorship and exhibition opportunities designed to connect brands with a highly targeted audience of investors, innovators, and industry leaders.
Register today and save up to $900 with Super Early Bird pricing!
Following the success of RESI San Diego, sponsorship opportunities are now available for RESI Boston, taking place September 22–23 during Biotech Week Boston. With two days of in-person programming, followed by three days of virtual partnering, RESI Boston offers even more opportunities to connect with the global life science investment community.
RESI San Diego welcomed an outstanding group of sponsors representing every corner of the life science ecosystem. Title Sponsors included Innopolis Jeonbuk Innovation Cluster, Biometas, and Korea Bio Innovation Center (KBIC). Gold Sponsors RSM and Medmarc shared their expertise through thought leadership and networking, while Silver Sponsors Biocytogen, Foley Hoag, and Polsinelli connected with innovators and investors throughout the conference. Additional support from Bronze Sponsors BSR Korea, JABI, Jeongup Si, Jeonbuk State, the Ministry of Science and ICT (Korea), Alithia Life Sciences, and Inertia further strengthened the event’s international reach.
Sponsoring RESI is more than displaying your logo. Sponsors gain visibility before, during, and after the conference through digital marketing, onsite branding, exhibit opportunities, educational programming, and access to RESI’s partnering platform. Whether your organization is looking to generate business leads, recruit new clients, showcase a regional innovation ecosystem, or establish thought leadership, RESI provides direct access to founders, investors, strategic partners, and service providers actively shaping the future of life sciences.
The expanded two-day in-person format at RESI Boston means more networking, more meetings, more educational sessions, and more opportunities for meaningful engagement than ever before. Combined with virtual partnering that continues after the event, sponsors benefit from sustained visibility and valuable follow-up opportunities well beyond the conference itself.
Ready to elevate your brand at RESI Boston? Explore the full range of sponsorship opportunities by downloading the RESI Sponsorship Brochure, or visit the RESI Sponsors page to learn more. To discuss a customized sponsorship package that aligns with your business development goals, contact sales@lifesciencenation.com. Sponsorship packages can be tailored to maximize your visibility, thought leadership, and connections within the global life science investment community.
By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation (LSN)
Life Science Nation (LSN) is pleased to release the RESI San Diego 2026 Program Guide for its upcoming hybrid conference, taking place June 22 in person at the JULEP Venue in San Diego, followed by four days of virtual partnering on June 23–24 and June 29–30.
RESI San Diego brings together early-stage life science companies, active investors, strategic partners, and industry leaders during one of the most important weeks in biotechnology. The conference features the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge, investor panels, educational workshops, company showcases, and a dynamic partnering platform designed to facilitate meaningful fundraising and business development conversations.
The Program Guide provides a comprehensive look at this year’s agenda, including sessions covering therapeutics, medtech, diagnostics, digital health, corporate venture capital, artificial intelligence in healthcare, strategic partnerships, and emerging investment trends. Attendees can also explore participating investors, sponsors, exhibitors, and networking opportunities available throughout the five-day partnering event.
With partnering already underway and meeting calendars continuing to fill, RESI San Diego offers a unique opportunity for innovators to connect directly with the investors and strategic stakeholders shaping the future of healthcare.
View the RESI San Diego 2026 Program Guide and secure your place today at RESI San Diego.
The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) returns to RESI San Diego with an exciting lineup of 14 pitch sessions showcasing emerging companies from across the life science ecosystem. Finalists represent a broad range of innovation spanning Therapeutics, Medical Devices, Diagnostics, and Digital Health, highlighting the technologies shaping the future of healthcare.
These sessions provide RESI attendees with a unique opportunity to discover breakthrough technologies and engage directly with the entrepreneurs driving them forward. Each company will present in front of a panel of active investors and strategic partners, participate in live Q&A discussions, and receive valuable feedback from industry experts.
In addition to presenting during their assigned pitch session, all IPC finalists will showcase their companies in the RESI exhibition area through dedicated pitch posters. This format allows attendees to explore innovative technologies at their own pace, connect directly with company leadership, and schedule follow-up discussions with promising startups throughout the conference.
The Innovator’s Pitch Challenge culminates with the presentation of RESI Cash awards, recognizing standout companies from across the competition. Award recipients will also be featured in Life Science Nation’s Next Phase newsletter, providing additional visibility among the global RESI community.
More than a competition, the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge serves as a platform for fundraising companies to gain visibility, validate their value proposition, and build meaningful relationships with investors, strategic partners, and industry leaders from around the world.
By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation (LSN)
There is a line between deciding to pursue investors and partners and pursuing them. Most people believe they cross it the moment they decide. They don’t. Deciding is private. The line is the part the market can see, and the market only sees behavior. You can be completely certain you are committed and still be, as far as anyone outside your own head can tell, standing exactly where you were a year ago.
The market doesn’t care what you declare. It responds to what you do. What it reads is presence, whether you are in the room when it counts. There are moments when it counts more than others, when the people who fund and license and partner are not scattered across a thousand calendars but gathered in one place at one time, looking for their next opportunity. Those moments are real, and they are on the calendar. The wave forms whether you are ready or not. The only question it puts to you is whether you are in the water when it arrives.
Here is the part that surprises people. The companies that are serious about this do not try to be efficient about it. You would think the sophisticated move is to be selective, to take only the meetings that obviously matter and skip the rest. It isn’t, and there is a hard reason why. The meeting that changes your company does not announce itself going in. The lead investor is hidden inside a large number of conversations that look, beforehand, exactly like the ones that lead nowhere. The licensing partner is buried in a stack of introductions you cannot tell apart until you are sitting in them. You cannot reason your way to the one that counts and avoid the others. The only way to reach it is to go through the volume. So the serious company does not look for reasons to take fewer meetings. It looks for reasons to take more, because every additional relevant room is another draw from the deck the one card is hidden in. Most of the draws are blanks. That is not a flaw in the method. That is the method.
Activity guarantees nothing, and no one who has done this for long will tell you otherwise. What inactivity guarantees is the opposite. The company that is not in the room is not weighed, and ends up passed over. It is simply never seen, and the market does not hold a seat open for the company that didn’t show. It gives the seat to one that did. Which brings me to the week of June 22 in San Diego. That is a week the market gathers. The city fills with meetings, events, and venues all competing for the same hours, and RESI, on June 22, is built for exactly the thing I have been describing, a room assembled out of investors, licensing teams, and business development people who came specifically to find companies like yours.
Some of you reading this are already going to be there. You have a reason to be in San Diego that week, and you still have not decided to be in this particular room. Sit with that for a second. You will be in the same city, on the same days, with the market gathered a few miles away, and you are on the fence about walking in. There is a word for standing that close to the water, dressed to swim, watching the set roll past. The word is not caution. It is hesitation, and from the outside the market cannot tell the difference between a company that hesitated and a company that was never there.
The line we started with is not crossed by deciding you are ready. It is crossed in the open, by being where the market is while the market is there. If you believe you are ready, the week of June 22 is where that belief becomes visible or doesn’t. Register for RESI San Diego, June 22.
This week, we provide some lightning takes on recent translational papers that caught our eye. We saw several preclinical advances in approaches for pain, neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease and bone disorders. In the gene-editing arena, several new large DNA insertion technologies and RNA-targeting CRISPR systems came to the fore.
But before we dive in, we want to highlight the New England Journal of Medicine report from the groups of Rebecca Ahrens-Niklas and Lindsey George at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that details a neuroepithelial tumor in a 5-year-old boy with severe mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPSI, a.k.a. Hurler Syndrome) 4 years after receiving an intracisternal injection of an AAV-9 gene therapy.
Summary timeline (A) of a patient with severe Hurler Syndrome who developed a neuroepithelial tumor 4 years after intracisternal administration of AAV-9 delivering an a-L-iduronidase (IDUA) transgene under the control of a cytomegalovirus enhancer and a chicken β-actin promoter (B). Axial and coronal MRI of the patient’s head performed 4 years after treatment revealed an intraventricular mass associated with truncated and rearranged AAV vector sequences integrated into intron 4 of the PLAG1 (pleiomorphic adenoma gene-like 1) gene on chromosome 8. Source: NEJM
Needless to say, approved AAV-based gene therapy products have a long track record of safety, efficacy and long-term transgene expression, but the specter of insertional mutagenesis has always loomed, even though AAV is a predominantly episomal vector. More than five years ago, a paper on hemophilia A dog studies published in Nature Biotechnology reported 1,741 unique AAV integration events in liver and clonal expansions of transduced hepatocytes, with many integrations near growth-related genes. In that case, no tumors were seen. Human liver-biopsy studies after AAV gene therapy have similarly made clear that integration and clonal hepatocyte expansion can happen, while not showing obvious malignant transformation. The NEJM report stands out as providing the first well-documented case of human oncogenesis plausibly linked to AAV vector integration. We can expect it to lead to tighter regulatory and post-marketing oversight of AAV gene therapies, as illustrated by the clinical hold the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already placed on Regenxbio’s gene therapy for Hurler, which was reported back in January. The takeaway for the investment community is that this is not entirely unexpected and should be viewed in the context of >6,000 patients receiving AAV gene therapy to date without major long-term toxic effects.
Safety signals have also been a recurring theme for drugs targeting sodium voltage channels (Nav1.7) in different pain indications. Multiple industry programs have encountered problems with off-target effects and poor clinical translation. Now a team led by Wengsheng Zhang at Sichuan University has identified potent nonopioid analgesics targeting multiple voltage-gated sodium channel isotypes with improved efficacy when tested their efficacy in perioperative rat models (PNAS). We wonder how such a broad approach would mitigate some of the safety flags encountered by previous clinical trials of investigational drugs targeting this pathway. Elsewhere, Xiao-Ming Li and collaborators at Zhejiang University School of Medicine set out to mitigate some of the adverse events of cannabinoid 1 (CB1) agonists, such as reduced locomotion, hypothermia, addiction and analgesic tolerance using so-called biased signaling and targeting downstream signaling cascades mediated predominantly through inhibitory guanine nucleotide binding protein (Gi), rather than beta-arrestin. They show their Gi-biased inhibitors display analgesic properties, but with reduced side effects when tested in mice (Cell). Over recent years, industry has explored cannabinoids to treat a wide range diseases, including chronic kidney disease, glaucoma and even obesity, again with limited clinical success. It will be interesting to see whether drugging a downstream signaling pathway will bring greater reward.
While cannabinoids haven’t exactly set the world of company formation alight, platforms leveraging autophagy biology are another story. In the past five years, Lysoway Therapeutics, Retro Biosciences, Casma Therapeutics, Automera Therapeutics, PAQ Therapeutics and AUTOTAC Bio have all received funding for platforms leveraging auto-phagosomal pathways, such as ATTEC, AUTAC, AUTOTAC, chaperone-mediated autophagy or AUTAB. The latest instantiation of ATTEC is described in a paper by Einar Sigurdsson and researchers from New York University, who develop single-domain antibodies to promote autophagy-mediated tau degradation in patient-derived neurons, improving motor function in tauopathy mice (Science Translational Medicine). Autophagy is also the focus for a collaboration between the Jia-Hong Lu team at the University of Macau and MindRank AI, which developed an AI-based screening platform using a variational autoencoder trained on a library (from MedChemExpress and TSBiochem) of over 1 million compounds to identify brain-penetrant small molecule autophagy enhancers effective in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (Nature Biomedical Engineering).
Elsewhere in the neurodegenerative disease field, TDP-43 aggregation is a hallmark of disorders like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Acurastem and Quralis have been tackling these diseases using antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) to modulate splice-switching of genes affected by mutant TDP-43. But new research from the groups of James Shorter at the University of Pennsylvania, Christopher Donnelly at the University of Pittsburgh, Nicolas Fawzi at Brown University, Brigid Jensen at Thomas Jefferson University and Jeetain Mittal at Texas A&M reveals that short 34-nucleotide RNAs can act as chaperones to inhibit TDP-43 aggregation and prevent neurodegeneration in the mouse. This potentially opens up short RNA chaperones as a new therapeutic modality for protein-folding disorders (Science).
Moving away from the CNS, some intriguing advances in other therapeutic areas popped into our inbox. One of the new frontiers for oligonucleotide therapies is common cardiovascular indications, such as heart failure and atrial fibrillation. For example, Ionis’ transferrin-receptor 1 targeted ASO for downregulating phospholamban in R14-deleted dilated cardiomyopathy just entered phase 1 testing in a development partnership with AstraZeneca. Along these lines, two teams headed by Matthias Nahrendorf and Maarten Hulsman at Harvard Medical School report another target, osteopontin (Spp1), downregulation of which with an antibody–siRNA conjugate targeting TREM2+ cardiac macrophages suppresses atrial fibrillation in mice (Nature Cardiovascular Research).
Another area likely to attract more commercial activity going forward is metabolic bone disease. Last December, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a landmark regulatory shift, formally qualifying percentage change from baseline at 24 months in total hip bone mineral density (BMD) via imaging as a validated surrogate endpoint (previously, bone disease trial times typically took anywhere from two to five years). Two recent papers discuss new therapeutic approaches to heterotopic bone formation after injury. In the first, two teams led by Benjamin Levi and Michael Dellinger from UT Southwestern show that vascular endothelial growth factor D (VEGF-D)-induced lymphangiogenesis can promote heterotopic bone resorption in mice (PNAS). And across the Atlantic, the groups of Johan Keller and Anke Baranowsky at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf target extracellular traps from myeloid cells using an FDA-approved recombinant DNAse 1 Pulmozyme to inhibit traumatic heterotopic ossification in mice (Science Translational Medicine; Roche/Genentech’s Pulmozyme (dornase alpha) is approved only for the pulmonary indication cystic fibrosis).
Moving onto advanced genetic therapeutics, several advances caught our attention in the gene-editing space. While programmable recombinases/integrases capable of introducing genetic cargoes >10 kb have been prominent in journals, momentum in commercializing these approaches has proceeded at a moderate pace, with Brink Therapeutics, Seamless Therapeutics and Stylus Medicine all raising funding in the past three years. The ability of recombinases to introduce large constructs has been touted as a key advantage over prime editing, which traditionally can only achieve desired edits no larger than ~300 bp. In this context, three recent papers disclose alternative prime-editing approaches for the genomic insertion of large sequences, overcoming the sequence size limitation. First, research patented by Ying Zhang’s group at Wuhan University shows that quadruple paired pegRNAs enable prime editing based genomic insertion of sequences as long as 26 kb in vitro (Nature). Second, the teams of Haoyi Wang, Chenxin Wang and Wei Li at the Chinese Academy of Science developed “PRIME-In”, a genome editing platform for the integration of up to 3 kb-long DNA sequences in human T cells independent of double-stranded DNA breaks (Nature Biomedical Engineering). Last, the groups of Erik Sontheimer and Wen Xue at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School described a “prime assembly” approach for the insertion of DNA fragments as long as 11 kb (Nature).
Finally, in the area of RNA editing, two recent studies expand the palette of CRISPR–Cas effectors capable of targeting and manipulating cells at the level of transcripts rather than nuclear DNA. A paper from I-Ming Hsing’s group at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology describes the first use of DNA-guided CRISPR–Cas12a effectors for programmable RNA recognition and cleavage (Nature Biotechnology). In a second paper, Yang Liu’s team at the University of Utah, Chase Biesel’s group at University of Würzburg and scientists from Akribion Therapeutics and BRAIN Biotech engineer CRISPR–Cas12a2 for the selective, DNA-triggered killing of virally infected human cells on the basis of their transcriptional profile (Nature).
Conference roundup
Selected startups raising funds in past three years presenting data at the American Society for Cell and Gene Therapy (ASCGT), Boston, May 11–15.
If you’re interested in commercializing your science, get in touch. We can help you figure out the next steps for your startup’s translational research program and connect you with the right investor. Follow us on X, BlueSky and LinkedIn. Please send feedback; we’d love to hear from you (info@haystacksci.com).
At most conferences, startup pitch competitions are treated as side programming. Founders present a deck, judges select winners, applause follows, and the event moves on.
At RESI San Diego, the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge (IPC) is designed differently.
The IPC is not simply about winning a competition. It is designed to help early-stage life science companies generate investor attention, create business development momentum, and accelerate conversations that continue long after the presentation ends.
For many companies, that interaction becomes the most valuable part of the experience.
“The discussions also felt far more relationship-driven than transactional,” said Sian Farrell, CEO of StimOxyGen. “Conversations extended beyond the pitch itself and focused on clinical strategy, regulatory pathways, commercialization, and long-term value creation.”
Unlike standalone pitch competitions, the IPC is integrated directly into the larger RESI partnering ecosystem. Participating companies also receive partnering access, poster presentation visibility, and exposure throughout the conference environment, creating multiple opportunities for follow-up interaction.
“The combination of the presentation and the partnering platform made a significant difference,” said Bram de Moor, CEO of You2Yourself. “RESI brought us into direct contact with European and transatlantic life science investors who specifically seek early-stage diagnostic and biomarker companies — an audience difficult to reach through cold outreach.”
The IPC also introduces an interactive audience component through “RESI cash,” distributed to attendees during registration. Participants allocate their RESI cash to the companies they believe demonstrate the strongest potential, creating additional visibility and engagement throughout the event.
For founders navigating today’s capital environment, opportunities that combine exposure with concentrated investor access are increasingly valuable.
As fundraising conditions continue to demand stronger differentiation and clearer commercialization pathways, platforms that help companies sharpen messaging and generate high-quality investor interaction have become increasingly important.
At RESI, the IPC is intended to serve exactly that purpose.
Selected companies receive:
Two 5-day RESI registrations
A six-minute company presentation followed by seven minutes of investor Q&A
Poster presentation space
Full partnering access
Exposure to investors, strategic partners, and pharma business development teams throughout Convention Week
For many founders, the IPC becomes more than a presentation opportunity. It becomes the place where investor conversations begin, strategic relationships form, and fundraising momentum accelerates.
Applications for the Innovator’s Pitch Challenge at RESI San Diego are currently open, with limited presentation slots remaining.
Next Phase Newsletter 