The trend has developed for biotech companies to do deals among each other in early-stage development phases.

Even though these collaborations can be very successful and support company development in its early years, their impact goes beyond the early-stage phase of companies.

Once companies increase in size, their platform/products prove to be promising and companies start partnering with larger multinationals for more global deals, those early-stage collaborations might pose obstacles to reach the next milestone in a biotech’s development.

How does Big Pharma view early-stage deals?  How can you best structure those collaborations? Where are mistakes most often made and how do you avoid them? 

This panel will provide an insight on this topic from the eye of Biotech as well as Big Pharma. Major dealmakers from both sides will shed light on the risks and chances of doing Biotech to Biotech early-stage deals.

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While the U.S. and European drug development markets remain dominant in terms of size and number of companies, the rest of the world is beginning to catch up as investors and biotech entrepreneurs are figuring out how to leverage the cost and regulatory advantages found in emerging biotech hubs around the world. The more innovative companies are leaving the comfort zone of keeping everything close to home and are now looking for discovery and development partners in regions offering better service, comparable or better science, and more affordable prices. At the same time, the larger regional firms in Asia and other developing markets are looking to assert themselves globally by exploring innovative partnerships and development strategies to build value downstream and access markets in the U.S. and Europe.  Drug discovery, development, and distribution are all now global activities involving key stakeholders throughout the world.  This session will examine new types of transactions and alliances that seek to take advantage of opportunities to access capital, technology, markets, and drug development expertise on a global basis. Panelists will discuss why and how they have made these decisions to look beyond the traditional options for building companies and why they believe this will increase their prospects for success.

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The recent wave of consolidation across the European mid-size pharma companies raises a number of very important issues regarding their potential role as development partners for earlier stage companies. While some “new” companies are emerging with stronger portfolios and expertise in specialty markets, questions remain about their ability to compete and bid for assets going forward. At the same time, earlier stage companies, when considering their partnering options, will have to weigh the relative value of what may appear to be a more “committed” partner that may offer more downstream potential to the increasingly attractive deal economics offered by the larger pharma firms.  This session will examine the decision making process from both sides of the table – how mid-size pharma is approaching their in-licensing strategies going forward and how small-mid size biotech firms are evaluating their options when considering whether a mid-size pharma partner is a better option than selling out to the big guys.

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White, or industrial, Biotech is usually seen by the pharmaceutical industry as having a role only as a means of making savings through reductions in manufacturing costs. Given that cost of goods is a small component of overall drug costs, as yet, little attention has been paid to new technologies emerging from this new area.

However, White Biotechnology is making great strides not only in using bio-catalysis as a means for major reductions in the number of synthetic steps required to create complex compounds, it also produces novel compound structures leading to whole new libraries of products to screen both against known targets and those emerging from genomic studies of disease. This new and little explored area will be a major source of new products from Bio-Drug Discovery methods. The panel will discuss achievements to date and breaking developments in this exciting new field.

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