Ahead of the Pre-JPM Partnering Week virtual conference from December 2-6, Big4Bio spoke with leaders in the life science industry about the latest developments in partnering and how COVID/the virtual experience has changed everything.
by Marie Daghlian
Partnering, the life blood of life sciences business development, is the engine that drives the industry and can maximize companies’ chances of success when they find the best collaborators and financial resources to meet their goals.
Before the Internet, COVID, and other factors, executives and business development leaders would primarily meet at in-person events around the world, but now the virtual component to meeting/partnering is changing the dynamic of life science partnering. Big4Bio turned to five life sciences event producers and partnering experts to discuss the current state of partnering and what we may see in the future.
Sara Demy founded Demy Colton, which hosts Biotech Showcase during the annual J.P. Morgan (JPM) Healthcare Conference in January in San Francisco and BioFuture in November. She started Biotech Showcase in 2008, partnering with EBD Group, because small innovative biotech companies felt there was no room for them at JPM and asked her, “Why isn’t BIO doing something? Why can’t you do something?”
At the time, partnering systems were still in their early stages, but since then have become very sophisticated. Companies entering the partnering systems are able to list what they are about, what they are interested in, and what technologies they are focused on.
“Now partnering is in the vocabulary of everybody who’s involved in therapeutic innovation and development,” says Demy. Partnering during a conference was hardly thought of when she joined BIO in 1998, and has grown exponentially since then, aided by the online partnering systems that have been developed. “You can’t do biotech without it these days,” she says.
Demy says pharma companies used to be very secretive but there’s a lot more openness now. People are much more willing to collaborate and to listen and meet with people than they used to be. Now people go to trade shows mainly for partnering meetings because everybody is there.
While Biotech Showcase went virtual during the COVID shutdown and continues to offer a virtual conference after the event, Demy says that virtual meetings can help advance discussion but “nothing can stand in for meeting somebody in person, looking them in the eye, shaking hands and sizing them up, deciding whether or not you believe them.”
Claire Macht is the director of EBD Group’s European portfolio of life sciences conferences, which include BIO-Europe in November, BIO-Europe Spring in March, and BioEquity Europe in partnership with BioCentury. Partnering has always been the main purpose for these events, which were designed from the beginning to focus on one-to-one meetings between biotech companies and pharma companies. She anticipates about 30,000 one-to-one meetings over three days at this year’s BIO-Europe, with people using EBD’s online partnering system to prearrange their one-to-one meetings profiles using data points that are specific to the biotech industry. Other conference activities are secondary to these meetings.
When Europe went into COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020, BIO-Europe Spring was just two weeks away and EBD quickly transitioned the event to a virtual partnering event.
“A lot of people were relieved that we were still providing a platform where they could interact with each other and I think that was the key thing they were looking for—if we can’t see each other, how is this going to work going forward?” Macht said.
EBD went back to in-person events in the fall of 2022 and has been surprised with the bounce back to in-person events from digital events, where attendance never reached the levels that it would expect at an in-person event.
“While deals were definitely being done within biotech and you had some teams saying that they had done more deals during lockdown than any other three month period previously, you could also see people were burning out really quickly because of that high level of performance,” Macht said. “Digital can provide a lot of efficiencies, but it doesn’t really give you a lot of elbow room for being human. And that toll was starting to tell the longer we held onto digital events.”
While EBD continues to offers virtual partnering days one week after an event, there has been a drop off in numbers over time. “I think people prefer being able to see each other and to interact in person and virtual is certainly seen as almost a backup option,” says Macht. “The experience that you have with a virtual event is night and day from what you experience in person. There’s a different level of concentration, there’s a different level of immersion in what’s happening that you get with an in-person event versus a virtual event.”
At recent in-person events on the partnering front, Macht says they have seen higher percentages of requests and meetings accepted even with a slightly lower attendance.
“It’s a really good indication that people still need to see each other even if it’s not necessarily meeting each other for the first time,” says Macht. “Coming back into in-person events has really shown that human element of sitting down across the table from someone or running into them in the lunch lineup, or meeting up with them at a reception. It is still something that’s really highly valued and in many ways seen as an essential way to do business within the biotech industry.”
Chris Dokomajilar is the founder of Dealforma, a comprehensive biotech deals and financing database used to research deals, funding trends, technologies, products, and the therapeutic areas in preparation for partnering meetings. He talks to business development (BD) professionals all the time.
“The change to virtual events increased the initial number of first conversations that happen,” Dokomajilar says. “Now they don’t have to wait for the next partnering event. But even during COVID there was really no replacement for that kind of ‘towards the end’ final meeting in person, ironing out final details and leading to a handshake. I think that still happened.”
During COVID lockdown, deals in some cases got signed faster because there was no travel involved, everyone was basically available, Dokomajilar noted, but now the tail end of that is that conversations are “starting more often and faster, but then you still need that face-to-face, not at the last signing, but towards the end as the final details are being kind of ironed out, they’ll do the general term sheet back and forth, deal comps, they’ll use data sets, databases.”
Patrik Frei sees virtual partnering meetings as complementary to in-person partnering events. Frei is the founder of Venture Valuation, a a consulting service to assist investors and companies in asset/company valuations for investment or partnering. He also started Biotechgate and developed software to help people meet and partner with each other, software that 20 large life sciences conference use under license for in-person and hybrid meetings. He also runs four virtual partnering meetings every year that are timed at one per quarter with the next one — the Pre-JPM Partnering Conference — at the beginning of December.
“During COVID,” Frei said, “we had software so we decided to continue partnering, we just did virtual events.” After COVID, lockdowns were lifted, yet he continued to see a big need for virtual meetings. “My goal is to grow this virtual partnering and make it one of the places you have to go to,” says Frei. “I mean, we are at a thousand people and we can do 5,000. And obviously, the more companies connect, the more interesting it becomes.”
One advantage is that it is cost effective, especially for small biotechs that cannot travel to many conferences. “It’s like a training ground, an entry for small startup companies to start and have first interactions,” Frei says. “They see how the partnering works, maybe build first contacts and based on that then decide, okay, it makes sense to go to an event because now I can meet some people that I’ve already talked to—the window, the starting point for these early stage companies to get started.”
Finally, Josh Lang started BioXchange in 2018 to connect companies and individuals in the Boston life sciences industry through virtual monthly events that cater to all sectors of the industry from scientists, law firms, service companies, staffing firms, and many others. He sees these virtual events as the way of the future, and a good way to connect people from all over to opportunities in the Boston area.
So, what does the future hold for in-person versus virtual partnering meetings? Barring another contagious epidemic, there is consensus that the new dynamic for life sciences partnering going forward is basically a combination of both. There will be times when a virtual meeting will be more efficient, and times when an in-person meeting is necessary.
Preparation will be key, however. Attendees at in-person events need to be very strategic with their decisions about which events to attend, how they attend them, what’s going to actually give them the most value in terms of who they’re going to be able to meet, and how they’re going to be able to meet them.
Pre-JPM Partnering Week, December 2-6, is designed to support the preparation for the week of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (“JPM Week”) in January and to provide virtual business development for pharma, biotech, medtech and digital health companies. Attend for five days of virtual partnering and establish new global connections thanks to pre-arranged one-on-one Zoom meetings in the business forum. Pre-JPM is a joint event of Big4Bio and Biotechgate/Venture Valuation.