East-West Biopharma Summit Road Trip:
Boston Review and Summary
Following the successful New York start-up of East-West Biopharma Summit Road Trip, our second event convened on Oct 20th in Boston. The East-West Biopharma Summit Road Trip is co-hosted by Jones Day, BioCentury, BayHelix, BioAroundWorld, and MSQ Ventures and aims to bring together leading professionals from biopharmaceutical companies to discuss biotech company opportunities this “winter”. We were honored to have the following attendees in the second in-person event in Boston: Tony Chen, Partner at Jones Day, Marc Estigarribia, Managing Director of MSQ Ventures, Joan Shen, CEO & Founder of NeuShen Therapeutics, Jay Mei, CEO of Antengene, Ed Zhang, Co-founder and CEO of Overland Pharmaceuticals, Cynthia Cai, Venture Partner at VIVA BioInnovator, Jennifer Chheda, Intellectual Property Partner at Jones Day, and Yi Dulkeith, Of Counsel at Jones Day.
The event was held at 100 High Street Jones Day office in Boston starting with a fantastic opening speech given by Tony Chen, Partner at Jones Day, and Marc Estigarribia, Managing Director of MSQ Ventures. After this speech, a panel discussion focusing on the “Biotech Company’s Opportunity during this Winter”. This is the most informative session of this event which was moderated by Marc Estigarribia, Managing Director of MSQ Ventures, Joan Shen, CEO & Founder of NeuShen Therapeutics, Jay Mei, CEO of Antengene, Ed Zhang, Co-founder and CEO of Overland Pharmaceuticals, Cynthia Cai, Venture Partner at VIVA BioInnovator, Jennifer Chheda, Intellectual Property Partner at Jones Day, and Yi Dulkeith, Of Counsel at Jones Day. These excellent speakers provided insightful opinions based on their experience of success and their perceptions toward the future development of the biotechnology industry. Finally, the event ended with a Q&A session and Networking. The following section showcased the content of our panel discussion.
PANEL DISCUSSION SUMMARY
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, NeuShen Therapeutics
Joan Shen holds a Ph.D. in life science from Indiana University School of Medicine where she also completed her clinical residency training and three postdoctoral training in endocrinology, psychopharmacology, and clinical pharmacology. In the US, she was the clinical lead for CNS drug development at Eli Lilly & Co, Wyeth, and Pfizer, with increasing responsibilities.
In the past, NeuShen Therapeutics has established and has been leveraging its own AVV platform technology in the CNS therapy field. Up to last month, NeuShen Therapeutics closed pre-A financing with about $ 20 M. Joan Shen shared the experience of their success during this tough environment and the biggest challenge and significance of the new modality in CNS disease. In her speech, Joan expressed her consideration of collaborations with other companies. She did not limit the form of collaboration in complementing pipelines and she highlighted the importance for small companies to strategize by considering all territories. One of the keys to NeuShen’s success was that they try to patent out of academics, who have filed. Furthermore, holding global rights is also crucial, for license-in, they always ask for a portion of global tights as they can have the ability and potential to develop.
Intellectual Property Partner, Jones Day
Dr. Jennifer Chheda has over 20 years of experience developing, implementing, and managing worldwide patent portfolios covering commercial biologics and pharmaceuticals as well as products in development, including clinical candidates. What is more, Jennifer has experience drafting and negotiating intellectual property agreements, including license, sponsored research, and development agreements. She has provided IP advice in the context of M&A transactions and has advised clients such as AbbVie, REGENXBIO, and Celgene in IP-related transactions.
During our panel discussion, Jennifer demonstrated the approach of leveraging with examples. Moreover, she analyzed the difference in prosecuting patent applications in the US and in China and exemplified what biotech companies should do to prepare for due diligence conducted by third parties. Jennifer gave her points of view on partnership opportunities. She highlighted that smaller biotech companies need to seek collaborations for phase 1 to gain co-development. She further proposed that the key for China’s biotech companies to go through the winter is innovation out of China and legal diligence. The target collaborative partners can be US companies which can bridge China’s biotech companies with the globe.
Venture Partner, VIVA BioInnovator
Dr. Cynthia Cai is an executive and investor with over twenty-five years of experience in the healthcare and life science industry. International experience in sales, marketing, business development, and equity investment. From an investor’s perspective, Cynthia pointed out the changes in valuation methodology in 2022 and the direction of changes heading into 2023. Additionally, from the view of BOD, she offered suggestions for biotech companies to prepare for the winter during this bear market.
Dr. Cai emphasized that startups should be conservative on their cash runway. Seeking pharma partnership should be a parallel strategy for companies doing fundraising, and even with the current geopolitical situation, cross boarder collaboration still possible. Dr. Cai also provided thoughts on valuation and pipeline strategies development.
Founder, Chairman and CEO, Antengene
Dr. Mei has over 25 years of experience in clinical research and the development of oncology therapeutics globally. He was one of the leading members in the clinical development of multiple blockbuster drugs that represent the most significant part of Celgene’s portfolio today, including REVLIMID®, which is among the best-selling oncology therapies worldwide, and was also involved in the clinical development of POMALYST®, also one of the best-selling oncology drugs worldwide, and IDHIFA®, a first-in-class drug for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia.
Recently, Selinexor received it NDA from NMPA in China. Jay illustrated the biggest challenge for the commercialization of this innovative drug and their strategies for overcoming these difficulties during the process. In Jay’s speech, he proposed that there exist both challenges and opportunities in commercialization across other regions in China. He highlighted the important role of filing patents in where make sense rather than limited by criteria such as population or GDP. Although this is only the other hand of in-licensing, it is crucial in leveraging IP from the business standpoint. In addition, the biggest challenge lies in the price. He said that innovative drugs are like luxury goods that cannot be afforded by every individual and only a few countries have this luxury. Therefore, affordability is a challenge. In China, there are two main ways for citizens to pay for the cost of medicine which is NRDL and self-pay. As not everyone is able to afford self-payment, there are opportunities for commercial insurance in the future.
Co-Founder & CEO, Overland Pharmaceuticals
Ed serves as Co-founder and CEO at Overland Pharmaceuticals, a leading cross-border biotech platform company in Asia and US focused on advance technology modality in oncology and autoimmune diseases. Ed co-founded Overland as a venture partner at Hillhouse Capital in 2020. Under his leadership, Overland has established an initial portfolio of 10 pipeline programs with two platform technologies through strategic partnerships with Allogene and ADC Therapeutics. Since its inception, Overland has expanded its team to more than 90 employees worldwide in the past two years and started building out a world-class cell therapy GMP manufacturing facility in Asia.
As a leading professional of cross-border companies, in our panel discussion, Ed shared his opinions on the advantages of cross-border companies compared with western biotech companies, and the most important factors to attract Chinese ADC biotech companies to participate in West and East licensing collaborations. In addition, DS-8201 has set a very strong bar for the ADC efficacy data in clinical development, and good data was generated from a deep understanding of biology and ADC design. Ed also pointed out the determinant factors when choosing to launch an ADC program. Ed pointed out that innovation and differentiated medicine/ MOA are key starting points for China’s biotech companies. From his analytical point of view, he predicted that the emerging Chinese biotech cross-border is going to go through a good change in the next 7 to 8 years. However, there are still challenges with pricing, ie issues with commercial insurance at the city level, which needs to go national in the future.
Of Counsel, Jones Day
Dr. Yi Han Dulkeith has global experience practicing across a wide spectrum of intellectual property matters. Her practice involves strategic portfolio management and prosecution, due diligence, opinion work, and post-grant proceedings. Yi's primary technical areas include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, with advanced experience in immunotherapy, cell therapy, gene editing, stem cell technology, biomarkers, and diagnostics. She also has handled patent prosecution matters and opinions and has directed and devised strategies in reexamination proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Dr. Yi Han shared her opinions about the essential IP considerations for ADCs and the way to address IP and transaction questions. She compared the difference between IP issues in the US and outside the US including IP in license, In license to out license-strategy, and IP evolution from academics’ perspectives. She took Pfizer and other biotech companies as examples to illustrate the strengths of leveraging IP.
CONCLUSION
In our panel discussion, our panelists brought us illuminating insights on the current developmental situation of the global biopharma industry, especially providing guidance and advice for biotechs and pharma through challenging times. As leading investors and financiers, they provided valuable lessons from their in-depth experiences, together with thoughtful outlooks and trends for the cross-border space including biotech companies from both west and east countries. There were two key issues highlighted by our panelists. First, innovation and differentiated medicine are key drivers behind the development of all biotech companies globally. The other one is cross-border collaboration, especially for biotech companies not just in China, but for all biopharma globally to seek collaborations outside their local borders to build and expand with the world.
In addition, it is exciting to mention that the third and fourth event of the East-West Biopharma Summit Road Trip is coming up soon on Nov 9th in San Diego and on Nov 11th in Silicon Valley. We look forward to sharing more knowledge and insightful viewpoints with the biopharma ecosystem globally.