Introduction
Since the dot com bubble burst in 2000, followed by a slow recovery
in Biotech investments after 2002 the profile for investing in and
therefore presentation of new propositions for life science enterprises
has shifted dramatically. Low risk development plans with broad
IP platform bases, multiple product or service generation capability
and an established experienced management have become essential
components of any young aspiring Genentech wannabe.
Then there is the problem of traversing the funding gap from POC/Seed
funding to Series A. Combine this with the current credit crunch,
it may not be the time to think of spinning out technology in to
an independent legal entity.
However we believe that in the life sciences/healthcare sector
for a sound proposition with a large target market in excess of
£500m, with a rounded management team and a strong and broad
intellectual property position, the situation is no worse than it
was a year ago. The start-up route is still the most tractable step
to ensuring that high net worth technologies, requiring substantial
proof of concept programmes reach the market.
Although the commitment to time and drive required by technology
transfer officers, inventors, and other founders is immense, two
or three such projects should always be on the go at any averagely
sized TTO. The financial rewards can be huge but more often the
wider socio-economic and public relations benefits to the University/Institute
are far greater.
Because investment windows and favoured technologies are fluid
and because the lead in time to organising a decently prepared and
robustly organised proposition is long, it pays to have several
such opportunities mature enough to latch on to investor enthusiasm
when it is there for the technology space that you are in.
Currently investors are receptive to medical device based opportunities,
clinical programmes with drug class repurposing platforms and new
high value diagnostics (including biomarker based platforms with
exemplar disease signatures). The caveat is that all these need
substantial clinical proof of concept to attract an investor at
a reasonable price.
Simon Youlton has a track record in early life science ventures
that includes being a Director on a management buy-out team of a
life science co; advising on strategic and operational plans for
a number of academic spin out ventures including:
He has experience at Board level serving on the Boards of spin
out ventures (Spear, PETRRA) and working with bus dev teams from
a number of successful CRUK spin outs including KuDOS and Antisoma
amongst others.
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