BIO Announces Complete Program Lineup for 14th Annual BIO Investor Forum

Thought-provoking sessions will highlight the latest trends and insights on policy and business development

Washington, D.C. (September 29, 2015) – The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) today announces the final program and speakers for the 14^th Annual BIO Investor Forum, an international investor forum which explores investment trends and opportunities in life sciences.  The event focuses on early and mid-stage private as well as emerging public companies that are poised for growth in 2016. The event will take place October 20-21, 2015, at the Parc 55 in San Francisco, California.

“This year’s BIO Investor Forum features a compelling and engaging program to inspire and encourage industry leaders to move their work forward,” said BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood. “We are delighted to host industry thought leaders sharing cutting-edge and timely insights that can help propel the latest breakthrough treatments and cures.”

Program highlights include:

Fireside Chats:

Robert T. Nelsen, ARCH Venture Partners, Co-Founder and Managing Director

--moderated by Matthew Rossiter, Partner, Fenwick & West

Wednesday, October 21, 12:30-1:25 p.m.

James Noble, Adaptimmune, CEO

--moderated by Tony Gibney, Managing Director, Leerink Partners LLC

Tuesday, October 20, 12:30-1:25 p.m.

Therapeutic Panels:

Report from the Frontier: Emerging Oncology Trends Bridging ASCO to ASH

Tuesday, October 20, 10:30 a.m. - 11:25 a.m.

If you missed the most important oncology event so far this year, this panel will address the key takeaways and what’s new since then. Just how important is PD-1 in your portfolio? CAR-T: is it still the game changing technology since 2014? What role will combination therapies play going forward into 2016? Will dendritic cell therapies maintain relevance in the immuno-oncology space? What does the ideal immuno-oncology portfolio look like? Will we continue to see partnering of assets amongst emerging biotechs?

Moderator: Jeff Smith, PhD, VP Investment Banking, H.C. Wainwright and Co., LLC

Panelists:

• Louis J. DeGennaro, PhD, President & CEO, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS)
• Olivier Lesueur, Managing Director, BIONEST Partners
• Ben Thorner, VP Business Development & Licensing, Head of North American Innovation Hubs, Merck Research LaboratoriesGeeta Vemuri, PhD, Managing Partner, Baxalta Ventures
• Jeffrey Wolf, Founder & CEO Heat Biologics

Precision Medicine: Leveraging National Genomic Databases for Therapy Development (U.S., UK, Iceland)

Tuesday, October 20, 9:00 a.m. - 9:55 a.m.

As the price point for full genome analysis falls through the $1,000 per person milestone, national efforts are ramping up for large studies that should enable much more personalized therapies. This data should accelerate drug development by clarifying genetic targets and the most appropriate patient sub-groups for clinical trials. The US’s NIH is planning a million-person database, the UK’s NHS is already recruiting a 100,000 genome collection, and Iceland’s deCODE initiative has already produced findings from its 160,000 person database. This panel will discuss the variety of strategies drug/therapy developers can apply to leverage these infrastructure investments most effectively.

Moderator:

• Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco

Panelists:

• Neil Campbell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Helomics
• Andrew May, D.Phil., Chief Scientific Officer, Caribou Biosciences
• Matthew Scholz, CEO, Immusoft
• Pamela Sklar, MD, PhD, Chief, Division of Psychiatric Genomics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Hannes Thor Smárason, Co-Founder and COO, WuXi NextCODE

Stretching Your Dollar: Methods and Tools for Increasing the Productivity of Clinical Trials

Wednesday, October 21, 10:30 a.m. - 11:25 a.m.

Recent Tufts data show clinical trials typically take nearly twice as long to complete enrollment as predicted at launch and 48% of trial sites miss enrollment targets. Delays in trials shrink the returns from patent exclusivity and increase R&D costs. New methods such as adaptive and batch trial designs, as well as explosive growth in digital tools, such as Apple’s ResearchKit, have transformed the trial design choices available. These innovations, and others, provide new levers for boosting productivity of clinical trials—with positive implications for improving cash burn rates and accelerating speed-to-market.

Moderator:

• Sastry Chilukuri, Partner, McKinsey & Company

Panelists:

• Michael V. McConnell, MD, MSEE, Professor of Medicine, Director of Cardiovascular Health Innovation and PI of the MyHeart Counts mHealth research study, Stanford School of Medicine
• Matt Noble, Senior Director, Product Management, Medidata Solutions
• Komathi Stem, Strategic Innovation Leader, Genentech (invited)
• Noah Craft MD, PhD, DTM&H, Co-Founder & CEO, Science 37, Inc.

Policy Outlook—Valuation Model Implications of 21st Century Cures, IP Reform, TPP, and PDUFA VI

Tuesday, October 20, 2:00 p.m. - 2:55 p.m.

2015 is producing more legislative and regulatory policy changes that apply to drug development than the industry has seen in several years. Each shift in exclusivity rules, patient-centered endpoints, patent challenge rules, or FDA application policies can dramatically affect how you—and your investors—value your therapeutic pipeline. Join this panel moderated by a BIO policy expert on whether some or all these proposals will actually take effect.

Moderator:

• Jeanne Haggerty, SVP Federal Government Relations, BIO

Panelists:

• Paul J. Hastings, Chairman & CEO, OncoMed Pharmaceuticals
• Elizabeth Krutoholow, Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence
• Andrew N. Merickel, PhD, Partner, Knobbe Martens
• Sara Radcliffe, MPH, President & CEO, California Life Sciences Association

Business Panels:

Investor Management Lessons of Fierce 15 Alumni CEOs

Tuesday, October 20, 4:30 p.m. - 5:25 p.m.

Each year FierceBiotech’s John Carroll has identified the “fiercest” private companies most likely to create dramatic growth for their investors. As many of those private companies went public, those CEOs’ relationships with their Boards evolved as pure venture investors made their exits. What are the most important factors investors look for in company management teams—and vice versa? How closely does the board align with company management to make an attractive investment offering? And what makes the investment banks see real value when looking at a potential IPO? Join past Fierce 15 winners as they discuss what they have learned.

Moderator:

• John D. Carroll, Editor-in-Chief, FierceBiotech

Panelists:

• Thomas E. Hughes, PhD, Zafgen
• Stephen T. Isaacs, Chairman, President, and CEO, Aduro Biotech

Venture Capital Funding Trends: BIO Analysis of Ten Years of Investment and the Gaps that Appear

Wednesday, October 21, 9:00 a.m. - 9:55 a.m.

BIO’s recent analysis of investment and deal trends across the past decade for emerging therapeutic companies found three remarkable gaps between where VCs have placed their investments and what might be expected by biotech CEOs. First, despite a remarkable growth in the number of start-ups, there appears to be a bottleneck of about 65 Series A rounds made per year—why? Second, the period sees a shift in popularity away from common chronic diseases toward rare diseases and oncology—how permanent is this therapeutic bias? Third, crossover investors are supporting more private companies earlier, but the total amount of Series A funding per year appears much flatter than the rocketing total of IPO value creation—will that venture money come back or are good startups getting frozen out? Learn from the investors making the individual decisions and how they see these trends continuing or changing in the future.

Moderator:

• Michael J. O’Donnell, Partner, Morrison & Foerster

Panelists:

• Lindy Fishburne, Executive Director, Breakout Labs; SVP for Investments, Thiel Foundation
• Charlotte Hubbert, Program Investment Officer, Venture Investing, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Nina Kjellson, General Partner, InterWest Partners
• Camille Samuels, Partner, Venrock
• David Thomas, CFA, Senior Director, Industry Research and Policy Analysis, BIO
• Ilan Zipkin, PhD, Senior Investment Director, Takeda Ventures

BioCentury Presents: Courting Crossover Investors

Wednesday, October 21, 2:00 p.m. - 2:55 p.m.

The participation rate of crossover investors in biotech venture funding rounds has been growing at more than 50% per year since 2012 with anecdotal information suggesting a near necessity of such involvement to maximize a company’s IPO performance. BioCentury will provide new data to quantify the impact of crossover fund involvement as well as foster a panel discussion of the “do’s and don’ts” of managing relationships with such investors.

Moderator:

• Steve Edelson, Senior Editor, Finance, BioCentury Publications, Inc.

Panelists:

• James Healy, MD, PhD, General Partner, Sofinnova Ventures
• Nathan Hubbard, Vice President Transactions, Oncology and Diagnostics, Eli Lilly and Company
• Oleg Nodelman, Founder and Managing Director, EcoR1 Capital
• Jonathan Norris, Managing Director, Silicon Valley Bank
• Dinesh V. Patel, PhD, President & CEO, Protagonist Therapeutics

Market Outlook—Status of the IPO Appetite, M&A, Foreign Shocks, and Higher Interest Rates?

Wednesday, October 21, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

While the appetite for new IPOs remains strong and cash is still flowing freely in the capital intensive biotech sector, concerns over valuation have the public markets on high alert. Investment banks are competing for the next biggest IPO with less clinical evidence in place up front. As M&A among payers and among biopharmas start a new round of consolidation, what does all this mean for privately held companies? Global economic factors have had a serious impact across all sectors, but how will biotech be affected? Has the biotech sector’s resilience strengthened since the last downturn? This panel of diverse experts will discuss what we can learn from history and where the market is crossing a new frontier.

Moderator:

• Brian Hagerty, Senior Director, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

Panelists:

• John Chambers, Vice-Chairman and Head of Healthcare Investment Banking, ROTH Capital
• Margarita Chavez, Director, Venture & Early Stage Collaborations, AbbVie Biotech Ventures
• Asthika Goonewardene, Senior Biotech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence
• David Woodhouse, PhD, Chief Financial Officer, NGM Biopharmaceuticals

(Speakers added daily. Please visit www.bio.org/investorforum for most up to date program and confirmed presenters).

The BIO Investor Forum is the must-attend event for public and private market investors, research analysts, investment bankers, and industry executives focused on investment and business development opportunities in life sciences.  BIO One-on-One Partnering™ will also provide an opportunity to arrange meetings between investors; companies; and industry business development, licensing and therapeutic franchise heads.

In response to an especially vibrant environment this year for early-stage biotechs, BIO has expanded its company presentations choices for investors and other attendees.  Please click here to find a downloadable spreadsheet on the now more than 160 presenting companies, sortable by therapeutic area and phase of development.

BIO is pleased to recognize the leadership provided by the BIO Investor Forum Conference sponsors including our Regional Co-Hosts, BIOCOM and the California Life Sciences Association, as well as our Supporting Bank Sponsors, H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC and Roth Capital Partners. BIO Double Helix and Helix Sponsors include AbbVie, Amgen, Baxalta, Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Merck and Takeda Ventures. Conference Sponsors include Aon Risk Solutions, Ash Stevens Inc., Bioscience Advisors, Blaise Group International, the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Clinical Network Services (CNS) PTY LTD, Fenwick & West LLP, FreeMind Group, Italian Trade Agency, Knobbe Martens, Morrison & Foerster LLP, NDA Group, Sichenzia Ross Friedman Ference LLP, Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc., Torreya Partners and VWR International.

To learn more about the BIO Investor Forum, including registration and program information, please visit here. Registration is complimentary for credentialed members of the media and qualified investors.

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