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Therapeutic Panel Topics


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

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, Vice President, Investment Banking, H.C. Wainwright & 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 Laboratories
  • Geeta Vemuri, PhD, Managing Partner, Baxalta Ventures
  • Jeffrey Wolf, Founder and CEO, Heat Biologics

Precision Medicine: Leveraging National Genomic Databases for Therapy Development (US, UK, Iceland)

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; member of NIH Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group

Panelists:

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

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: Lawrence Klein, Associate Principal, McKinsey & Company

Panelists:

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

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

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:


Business Panel Topics


Investor Management Lessons of Fierce 15 Alumni

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?  This panel will feature John Carroll asking past Fierce 15 winners to share what they have learned.

Moderator: John D. Carroll, Editor-in-Chief, FierceBiotech

Panelists:

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

BIO released new analysis in June of investment and deal trends across the past decade for emerging therapeutic companies. That analysis 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 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 at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Nina Kjellson, General Partner, Canaan 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

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:

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

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, Capital Markets, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

Panelists:

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

Digital Health Spotlight #1—Investment Landscape and CEO Interview

Recent advances in mobile applications, miniaturization, and standards interoperability, plus the rising acceptance or even preferences of patients to sharing healthcare interactions through digital channels are changing the face of medicine.  Join this spotlight session for a report from the frontier of digital health, already an industry sector with a growing, multibillion-dollar investment base, and a conversation with a CEO exploring this new terrain.

Moderator: Olivier Leclerc, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

Speaker: Jeffrey Brewer, CEO, Bigfoot Biomedical

Digital Health Spotlight #2—The Road to Health 2.0 and Beyond
Since 2007, Matthew Holt has been on the forefront of exploring and explaining the digital health terrain at co-founder of the Health 2.0 conference series and writer at The Health Care Blog.  Please join as he provides his perspective on the trajectory of the health care industry’s relationship with technology over the past eight years and answers questions about where he sees these trends impacting the biotechnology industry.

Speaker: Matthew Holt, Co-Founder, Health 2.0
 

Plus- Fireside Chats from industry leaders. Check back often for program updates.