Tag Archives: venture capital

Innovator’s Pitch Challenge: Where Deals Start

19 May

By Max Braht, VP of Business Development, LSN

Max-Braht-Headshot

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.

Apply to Pitch at RESI San Diego

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Merck, Servier & Meiji Pharma Leaders Share Pharma BD Insights Ahead of RESI San Diego & Convention Week

19 May

By Sougato Das, President and COO, LSN

Sougato-DasAs partnering activity ramps up ahead of convention week in San Diego, early-stage life science companies are preparing for a critical week of fundraising, licensing, and strategic business development. To help companies better understand how large pharmaceutical companies evaluate new opportunities, Life Science Nation is hosting a webinar featuring leaders from Merck, Servier, and Meiji Pharma USA.

The webinar, Large Pharma BD & Investment: Merck, Servier & Meiji Pharma Prep You for RESI & Convention, will take place on June 2, 2026 at 1:00 PM ET and will be moderated by Sougato Das.

Carla-Bauer
Carla BauerDirector, Search and Evaluation, BD & Licensing
Merck		 Irene Blat
Irene Blat, PhDHead of External Innovation, NA
Servier		 Sho-Takahata
Sho TakahataSenior Director, Venture Investment
Meiji Pharma USA

The discussion will explore how pharma companies source and evaluate external innovation, what teams look for during initial meetings, how internal screening processes work, and what makes a company stand out for continued engagement. Topics will also include licensing, R&D partnerships, strategic investment, platform collaborations, and practical tips for improving partnering conversations during convention week.

For companies preparing for RESI San Diego and broader convention week activity, the webinar offers an opportunity to hear directly from pharma business development and investment leaders before arriving in San Diego.

RESI San Diego begins June 22 with an in-person conference day followed by four days of virtual partnering on June 23–24 and June 29–30, connecting early-stage companies with active investors, pharma scouts, strategic partners, and global healthcare stakeholders.

Sign Up for the Webinar

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Do RESI San Diego and BIO Overlap?

12 May

By Sougato Das, President and COO, LSN

Sougato-Das

The fourth week of June is one of the largest gatherings of life science business development and investment professionals on the calendar, second only to JPM. If you are an early-stage company raising anywhere from $250K to $75M, that week in San Diego is not optional. The question most founders are asking right now is whether attending RESI means missing BIO.

The short answer is no. Here is why.
RESI partnering starts early morning on June 22. BIO Convention partnering does not start until early afternoon. That means you can run a full morning of investor meetings at RESI before BIO gets going. The two venues are about 15 minutes apart, making it straightforward to move between them in the afternoon. RESI has virtual days both that week and the following week, so any meetings that do not fit in person can be held on Zoom with no schedule conflicts.

If you find yourself double booked across both events on Monday afternoon, the partnering systems give you real options. Move the Convention meeting to another day. Move the RESI meeting to the morning or to a virtual slot. Or simply decide which meeting matters more for your specific raise. Having choices is better than not having them.

Fundraising is a numbers game. Companies with tight budgets need to maximize every hour and dollar spent in San Diego each week. RESI is not a scheduling conflict. It is more meetings with investors and pharma external innovation teams that are specifically focused on early-stage deals. Add it to your agenda.

Bonus: Increase your networking ROI by attending the many side events and receptions during Convention week. Luckily we’ve assembled the most complete list for you! Click here.

Register for RESI San Diego

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From Story to Outcome: Exit Risk 

12 May

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation (LSN)

DF-News-09142022

As part of Life Science Nation’s series on converting scientific innovation into investable signal, the final layer of the De-Risk Stack addresses exit risk. (Explore the full series here) After market, technical, regulatory, execution, economic, and financing risks are reduced, the final question becomes clear: how does this become a return?

Exit Risk

From Story to Outcome

At the top of the stack is the question every investor ultimately asks: how does this become a return?

Exit risk is not about predicting a specific transaction. It is about defining a realistic, evidence-based path to liquidity. Without that, even well-executed companies remain difficult to fund across multiple rounds.

This begins with clarity on the most likely exit path, acquisition, licensing, or public markets, aligned with the type of company you are building and the norms of your sector.

From there, you must be able to name a credible buyer universe: specific pharmaceutical, biotechnology, device, or platform companies for whom your asset would represent strategic value. Strategic fit explains why those buyers should care, how your product fills a pipeline gap, extends an existing franchise, enables a new modality, or provides differentiated access to a market.

Timing and value inflection points determine when the asset becomes relevant to those buyers. Clinical data, regulatory milestones, partnership signals, and early commercial traction all influence when interest peaks.

Competitive positioning answers why your asset would be selected over alternatives. Deal structure reality grounds expectations in how transactions are done in your space, including licensing terms, milestones, royalties, and acquisition patterns.

Finally, return potential must align with the expectations of the capital investing in the company. A good company is not always a good investment. The scale and timing of the likely outcome must match the risk and capital required to get there.

Exit risk is resolved when the company presents a credible path from development to liquidity, with clear buyers, clear triggers, and realistic structures.

Core Elements of Exit Risk

  • Exit path clarity
  • Buyer universe
  • Strategic fit
  • Timing
  • Value inflection points
  • Competitive positioning
  • Deal structure reality
  • Return potential

Sequence and Progression

These risks do not resolve independently. The order in which they are addressed determines outcome.

Market clarity precedes technical validation. Technical validation precedes regulatory definition. Regulatory definition precedes scaled execution. Execution enables economic validation. Economic validation supports structured financing. Financing makes an eventual exit possible.

When this sequence is followed, uncertainty is reduced efficiently and value compounds. When it is not, capital is consumed without progress and even strong assets can stall.

From Risk to Signal

The purpose of de-risking is to generate signal.

Investors do not fund ideas; they fund signal, coherent, cross-validated evidence that enough uncertainty has been removed to justify action. Each layer of the stack produces a different class of signal: market signal, technical signal, regulatory signal, execution signal, economic signal, financing signal, exit signal. As these accumulate and align, an opportunity becomes not just understandable, but investable.

Fundraising, in this view, is not persuasion. It is the systematic production and communication of signal.

Implications

For founders, progress is defined by the reduction of uncertainty, not by the volume of activity or the length of the roadmap.

For investors, the De-Risk Stack provides a structured framework for evaluation, what is resolved, what remains unresolved, and what must be proven next.

For ecosystems, it highlights the missing infrastructure between innovation and capital: shared standards, de-risking platforms, and operating systems that help assets move through this process more reliably.

From Framework to System

The De-Risk Stack defines how life science companies become investable. Implementation defines how that process is executed.

At the company level, this means shaping opportunities deliberately, targeting specific layers of risk, executing against clear milestones, and running structured fundraising campaigns.

At the ecosystem level, it means building infrastructure that can systematically identify, assess, and advance assets through the stack, so promising technologies do not stall for avoidable reasons.

When applied consistently, the De-Risk Stack becomes more than a framework. It becomes a system for converting scientific innovation into investable opportunity.

Closing

The challenge in life science is not discovery. It is the disciplined conversion of discovery into investable signal.

De-Risking, Signal, and Investability Series：

  1. The Problem Is Not the Science: A Seven-Part Series on De-Risking, Signal, and Investability
  2. Technical Risk – From Belief to Evidence
  3. From Proof to Approval: Regulatory Risk
  4. From Plan to Progress: Execution Risk
  5. From Progress to Viability: Economic Risk
  6. From Viability to Capital: Financing Risk
  7. From Story to Outcome: Exit Risk

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Oncovita: A Novel Measles-Based Approach to Unlock Immunotherapy in Solid Tumors 

5 May

By Rahul Shetty, Project Management & BD Associate, LSN

Max-Braht-HeadshotIn oncology, one of the most persistent challenges is not a lack of therapeutic innovation, but a fundamental biological limitation: many tumors remain invisible to the immune system. While immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment paradigms, a significant proportion of cancers, often referred to as “cold” tumors, fail to respond because they simply are not recognized as threats.

Oncovita, a France-based biotechnology company, is addressing this challenge with a novel approach rooted in engineered measles virotherapy. By leveraging the natural biology of the measles vaccine virus, the company aims to expose tumors to immune attack, effectively converting immunologically silent cancers into targets the body can detect and destroy.

This approach is particularly relevant in pleural mesothelioma, one of the deadliest solid tumors, where survival is often measured in months and treatment options remain extremely limited. Its immunologically silent nature makes it largely invisible to immune surveillance and resistant to existing immunotherapies, leaving patients with few effective options.

At the core of Oncovita’s platform is MVdeltaC, an engineered measles vaccine virus designed for intratumoral administration. Many tumors, including mesothelioma, overexpress CD46 – the receptor used by the measles virus to enter cells, providing a natural mechanism for selective targeting. Once inside the tumor, MVdeltaC triggers immunogenic tumor cell death and immune activation by releasing danger signals and tumor antigens, ultimately priming T cells to recognize and attack cancer. In doing so, it converts “cold” tumors into “hot” ones, enabling both local and systemic immune responses.

The use of measles vaccine as a therapeutic backbone offers several advantages. The live attenuated vaccine has been administered to more than four billion people worldwide, establishing a strong safety profile. It replicates in the cytoplasm without integrating into host DNA and is known to stimulate both innate and adaptive immunity, making it well suited for cancer immunotherapy.

Evidence supporting this approach includes a documented remission in a patient with triple-negative breast cancer treated with a measles-based therapy, along with preclinical data showing complete tumor regressions, long-term survival, and systemic immune activation across multiple aggressive tumor models. MVdeltaC has also demonstrated strong potential in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, further expanding its therapeutic relevance.

Oncovita is advancing MVdeltaC with an initial focus on pleural mesothelioma, supported by FDA & EMA Orphan Drug Designation and a clear regulatory pathway. From there, the company plans to expand into triple-negative breast cancer and additional solid tumors, using a stepwise strategy that builds early clinical validation before scaling into larger markets. This stepwise approach allows the company to generate early clinical proof-of-concept in a high-need population before expanding into broader oncology indications. With approximately 9,000 eligible patients annually across the U.S., Europe, and Japan in its initial indications and a significantly larger addressable market across solid tumors, the long-term opportunity is substantial.

Oncovita’s progress is supported by a multidisciplinary team with expertise spanning virology, immunotherapy, and clinical oncology. The company collaborates with leading institutions and key opinion leaders, including experts from Institut Gustave Roussy and MD Anderson Cancer Center, reinforcing the scientific and clinical foundation of its program.

As immunotherapy continues to evolve, enabling the immune system to recognize cancer may be just as important as enhancing its response. Oncovita’s measles-based virotherapy represents a compelling approach to solving this challenge, offering the potential to expand immunotherapy to patients who currently have limited treatment options.

Learn More & Connect

To learn more about Oncovita, visit: https://www.oncovita.fr/

To connect directly with CEO Stephane Altaba, reach out here: stephane.altaba@oncovita.fr

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Convention Week: How to Get the Most Investor/Inlicensor Meetings & Exposure 

5 May

By Sougato Das, President and COO, LSN

Sougato-Das

Prep for the June mega-events in San Diego, BIO Convention and the neighboring RESI, starts now. We’re 7 weeks out and it’s getting warm. In another week, the Heat is On by Glen Frey. Three weeks or so after that, scheduling starts and it’s Hot Hot Hot by Buster Poindexter. Finally, when partnering starts on June 22, it’s the Heat of the Moment by Asia. 80s music references aside, here are the top things you need to do NOW to ensure your company succeeds:

  1. Register. Want to meet investors funding seed through series B and pharma external innovation? There will be over 300 at RESI. Click here to take advantage of RESI early bird rates.
  2. Consider registering to pitch, with many opportunities throughout Convention week. Pitching at RESI puts you in front of a panel of well-aligned investors who are obligated to be interactive and give you feedback.
  3. Log into the partnering system and find your ideal partners. Repeat this every week to account for new registrants. At RESI this is straightforward as the LSN staff populates investors profiles very granularly based on the LSN Investor Database. Investors are carefully vetted. Searching for investors interested in a given modality, disease, geography, stage, etc. is fast. Searching for well-aligned partners in the larger Convention ecosystem can require more oversight (e.g. is an in-licensor looking for early stage, late stage or on-market assets?) Join my webinar to learn the best way to do this!
  4. Open as much availability on your calendar/agenda as possible. Convention week is NOT the time to block the early morning time slots because you want to sleep in 😉
  5. Send customized meeting requests. Meetings are more likely to be accepted if you spend some effort customizing each meeting request to the interests of the receiving company. Join my webinar to learn the best way to do this!
  6. Minimize the number of people from your company who are required to attend the meeting. The fewer people in the meeting the more likely it is to get scheduled (if it’s accepted).
  7. Follow-up on unanswered meeting requests. As someone who’s been behind the scenes running partnering at dozens of partnering events, I can tell you there is a complex series of variables that determines if your meeting request gets accepted. Sometimes it’s as simple as the person who would accept your meeting request did not register until later, even though his/her colleagues registered earlier. That’s why it’s important not let unanswered meeting requests languish indefinitely. Join my webinar to learn the best way to do this!
  8. Cancel ‘dead’ unanswered meeting requests. When you determine you won’t get a response for a given meeting request, cancel it to increase your meeting request allotment. Join my webinar to learn the best way to do this!
  9. When scheduling starts, immediately reach out to the other party for meetings that cannot be scheduled due to lack of mutual availability. You can also try reaching out to the partnering system administrators to see if they can help.
  10. Practice your meeting presentation to ensure everything gets finished in the allotted time. For Convention, 25 minutes is a good guide, as meetings can be far apart from each other. For RESI, 30 minutes as meetings are physically close together. To get between RESI and Convention, plan at least 20 minutes.
  11. Take advantage of virtual partnering. RESI provides virtual partnering during Convention week and the following week. Extend your ROI by continuing the momentum of Convention week into the next week.
  12. Be prompt about your follow-up the week after Convention.

Whew! I’m So Tired (by the Beatles) just writing this, I can’t imagine how I feel after I go through the Convention Week + RESI gauntlet! For more details on how to succeed at Convention & RESI, join my webinar on May 20 for all the best tips and tricks!

Sign Up the Webinar

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From Viability to Capital: Financing Risk 

5 May

By Dennis Ford, Founder & CEO, Life Science Nation (LSN)

DF-News-09142022

As part of Life Science Nation’s series on converting scientific innovation into investable signal, the focus now shifts to financing risk. After establishing market need, technical proof, regulatory clarity, execution capability, and economic viability, the next question becomes whether the company can actually secure the capital required to move forward.

Financing risk is where opportunity must become an investable campaign. It is not about whether capital exists, but whether a company can access it in a structured, disciplined way that aligns with how risk is being reduced, and whether the capital required to reach market is a financially viable prospect.

This article examines how companies define capital requirements, link funding to milestone-driven progress, align with the right investors, and build a credible fundraising strategy.

From syndicate formation to campaign execution and timing, this layer of the De-Risk Stack determines whether capital follows signal—or stalls in uncertainty.

Financing Risk

From Opportunity to Investable Campaign

Once a clear plan exists and economic logic is credible, the question becomes whether capital can be raised to support execution at each stage.

Financing risk is not about whether capital exists. There is significant capital available globally for life science. The real question is whether your company can access it in a disciplined and repeatable way that matches how risk is being reduced.

This starts with capital requirement clarity. You need to know how much capital is required to reach the next set of milestones, based on your actual operating plan, not a generic estimate. If milestones are unclear, capital requirements will be too.

Next is the linkage between capital and milestones. Every dollar raised should be tied to the removal of specific risks and the creation of specific signals. Investors are not funding time; they are funding progress.

Stage alignment and investor fit determine which capital you should pursue. Different investors specialize in different stages, risk profiles, and modalities. Misalignment here leads to wasted time and damaged narratives.

Most meaningful rounds require syndicate formation. That means identifying a plausible lead and realistic co-investors, and understanding their incentives and constraints.

Fundraising itself must be approached as a structured campaign, not a series of disconnected meetings. That includes building a sufficiently large and relevant investor universe, sequencing outreach, managing follow-up, and maintaining momentum over time.

Timing closes the loop. Capital must be raised when sufficient progress has been made to justify the next step, but before the company is under acute pressure. Raising too early or too late increases risk and narrows options. Additionally, accepting a bad deal can have a negative impact on future rounds, with potential investors backing out due to unfavorable terms.

Financing risk is resolved when capital follows the systematic reduction of risk—when each round is underpinned by new signal rather than hope.

Core Elements of Financing Risk

  • Capital requirement clarity
  • Linkage between capital and milestones
  • Stage alignment
  • Investor fit
  • Syndicate formation
  • Fundraising strategy
  • Campaign execution
  • Timing

Next in the series: Exit Risk — Defining the Path to Liquidity

Previous Articles：

  1. Technical Risk – From Belief to Evidence
  2. The Problem Is Not the Science: A Seven-Part Series on De-Risking, Signal, and Investability
  3. From Proof to Approval: Regulatory Risk
  4. From Plan to Progress: Execution Risk
  5. From Progress to Viability: Economic Risk

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