Live Notes from JP Morgan Healthcare Conference Virtual Endpoints Preview: January 8-9 2024
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
Endpoints at #JPM24 | Primed to unlock biopharma’s next dealmaking wave
Endpoints at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
January 8-9 | San Francisco, CA80 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
An oasis has emerged in the biopharma money desert as backers look to replenish capital — still, uncertainty remains on whether it’s a mirage or the much needed dealmaking bump the industry needs. Yet spirits run high as JPM24 marks the triumphant return of inking strategic alliances and peering into the industry crystal ball — while keeping an eye out for some major M&A.
We’re back live from San Francisco for JPM Monday and Tuesday — our calendar of can’t-miss panels and fireside chats will feature prominent biopharma leaders to watch. The Endpoints Hub provides the ultimate coworking space with everything you need — 1:1 and group meeting spots plus guest pass capabilities and more. Join us in-person at the Endpoints Hub or watch online to stay plugged into all the action.
8 JAN
Welcome remarks
8:05 AM – 8:25 AM PST
Pfizer vet Mikael Dolsten has some thoughts on Big Pharma R&D
Endpoints News founding editor John Carroll will sit down with longtime Pfizer CSO Mikael Dolsten to talk about Pfizer’s pipeline, what he’s learned on the job about preclinical research and development and what’s ahead for the pharma giant in drug development and deals.
Mikael Dolsten
Chief Scientific Officer, President, Pfizer Research & Development
Pfizer
Pfizer Mikael Dolsten: Pfizer produced a series of AI generated molecules with new properties. Sees rapid adoption of AI in the area of drug discovery and molecular design.
8:25 AM – 9:05 AM PST
What pharma wants: The industry’s dealmakers look ahead at 2024
The drug industry’s appetite for new assets hasn’t slowed down. Top business development execs will give their outlook on the year, what they’re looking for and how they see the market.
Glenn Hunzinger
Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences Consulting Solutions Leader
PwC US
Rachna Khosla
SVP, Head of Business Development
Amgen
James Sabry
Global Head of Pharma Partnering
Roche
Devang Bhuva
SVP, Corporate Development
Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Endpoints News
Dealmaking panel
Glenn Hunzinger: if you do not have a GLP1 will have a tough time getting a good market price for your company; capital markets are not where they want to be; sees a tough deal making climate like last year. The problem with many biotech companies are they are coming earlier to the venture capital because of greater funding needs and so it is imperative that they articulate the potential of their company in scientific detail
Rachna Khosla: Make sure your investors are not just CAPITAL PARTNERS but use their expertise and involve them in development issues you may have, especially ones that a young firm will face. The problem is most investments assume what the future looks like (for example how antibody drug conjugates, once a field left for dead, has been rejuvenated because of advances in chemistry).
James Sabry: noted that cardiac and metabolic drugs are now at the focus of many investors, especially with the new anti-obesity drugs on market
Devang Bhuva: Most deals we see start as collaborations or partnerships. You want to involve an alliance management team early in the deal making process. This process could take years.
9:05 AM – 9:20 AM PST
The IPO: How Apogee Therapeutics went public in the most challenging market in years
Not many biotechs went public in 2023. And of those that did, not many have had a great time of it. Apogee is the exception and our panel will offer a behind-the-scenes look at their decision to enter the market and what life is like as a young public company.
Michael Henderson
CEO
Apogee Therapeutics
Kyle LaHucik
MODERATOR
Senior Reporter
Endpoints News
Michael Henderson: Not many biotech IPOs deals happened in 2023. Michael feels it is because too many biotechs focused on building platforms, which was a hard sell in 2023. He felt not many biotechs had clear milestones and investors wanted a clear primary validated target. He said many biotech startups are in a funding crunch and most need at least $440M on their balance sheet to get to 2026.
9:50 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Top predictions for biotech in 2024
Catalent CEO Alessandro Maselli will be back at the big JPM healthcare confab to talk with Endpoints News founder John Carroll about their top predictions of what’s coming up for the biotech industry in 2024. The stakes couldn’t be higher as the industry grapples with headwinds and new opportunities in a gale of market forces. Two top observers share their thoughts on the year ahead.
Alessandro Maselli
President & CEO
Catalent
10:15 AM – 10:35 AM PST
Innovation at a crossroads: Keys to unlocking the value of science and technology
The industry has long discussed the promise of technology and the acceleration it provides in scientific advancement and across the industry value chain. However, the promise of its impact has yet to fully be realized. This discussion will outline the keys to unleashing this promise and the implications and actions to be taken by the biopharmaceutical companies across the industry.
Ray Pressburger
North America Life Sciences Industry Lead & Global Life Sciences Strategy Lead
Accenture
SPONSORED BY
10:35 AM – 11:05 AM PST
Activism and Investing: In conversation with Elliott Investment Management’s Marc Steinberg
Elliott has been behind many of 2023’s highest-profile healthcare investments, including multiple activist engagements and taking Syneos Health private. What has made large healthcare companies such interesting investment opportunities for firms like Elliott? What’s Elliott’s investing strategy in healthcare? And what should companies expect when an activist calls?
Marc Steinberg
Senior Portfolio Manager
Elliott Investment Management
Andrew Dunn
MODERATOR
Biopharma Correspondent
Endpoints News
11:05 AM – 11:35 AM PST
Creating ROI from AI
AI is predicted to transform the way drugs are made, from discovery to clinical trials to market. But beyond the initial hype and early adoption, where has AI made meaningful contributions to R&D? How does it help drug developers advance science? Endpoints publisher Arsalan Arif is convening a panel of leading experts to discuss the state of AI in the pharmaceutical landscape and the outlook for 2024. How does AI impact the drug pipeline, from the early steps of discovery to reducing trial failure rate?
Thomas Clozel
Co-Founder & CEO
Owkin
Venkat Sethuraman
SVP, Global Biometrics & Data Sciences
Bristol Myers Squibb
Frank O. Nestle
Global Head of Research & Chief Scientific Officer
Sanofi
Matthias Evers
Chief Business Officer
Evotec
Arsalan Arif
MODERATOR
Founder & Publisher
Endpoints News
SPONSORED BY
11:35 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Biopharma’s dealmaker: Behind the scenes with Centerview Partners co-president Eric Tokat
Almost every major biopharma deal in 2023 had Centerview’s name attached to it. And much of the time, Eric Tokat was the banker making those deals happen. Hear his outlook for 2024, how transactions are getting done and what’s placed his firm at the center of so much action.
E. Eric Tokat
Co-President, Investment Banking
Centerview Partners
CenterView Partners Eric Tokat feels dealmaking will improve in 2024, given the recent flurry of dealmaking at end of last year and right before main JPM Healthcare Conference. He says Centerview wants to help the biotechs they invest in on their strategic path. This may translate into buyers more actively involved (more than startups want) and buyers now are in the drivers seat as far as the timeline of deals and development.
Is the megamerger dead for this year? He says it is very hard to see two major mergers happening but there will be many smaller and mid size biotech deals happening, but these deals will be more speculative in nature.. The focus for large pharma is top line growth. Most of the buyers have an infrastructure and value is more of buying and dropping it in their business so there is now a huge emphasis on due diligence on whether synergies exist or not
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM PST
Founder, legend, leader: In conversation with Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi
Carolyn Bertozzi’s discoveries around bioorthogonal chemistry won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022 and are at the heart of new therapies being tested in patients. Join us as we discuss what inspires her and where she sees the next big advances.
Carolyn Bertozzi
Prof. of Chemistry, Stanford University and Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H
Stanford University
Nicole DeFeudis
MODERATOR
Editor
Endpoints News
Bioorthogonal chemistry: class of high yielding chemical reactions that proceed rapidly and selectively in biological environments without side reactions toward endogenous functions. This is also a type of ‘click chemistry’ in biological system where only specifically alter the biomolecule of interest.
Orthogonal: two chemicals not interacting with each other
Dr. Bertozzi noted she has started a new Antibody-Drug-Conjugate (ADC) company which involves designing with biorthogonal chemistry to make new functional molecules with varying properties
She noted hardly any biologists knew anything about glycobiology when she first started. However now she feels pharma and academia are working very well with each other
Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry
Curated by Prof. Carolyn R. Bertozzi, 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Source: https://pubs.acs.org/page/vi/bioorthogonal-click-chemistry
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded jointly to ACS Central Science Editor-in-Chief, Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research, for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
To celebrate this remarkable achievement, 2022 Nobel Prize winner Professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi has curated this Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry Virtual Issue, highlighting papers published across ACS journals that have built upon the foundational work in this exciting area of chemistry.
From Mechanism to Mouse: A Tale of Two Bioorthogonal Reactions
Ellen M. Sletten and Carolyn R. Bertozzi* Acc. Chem. Res. 2011, 44, 9, 666-676 August 15, 2011
Abstract
Bioorthogonal reactions are chemical reactions that neither interact with nor interfere with a biological system. The participating functional groups must be inert to biological moieties, must selectively reactive with each other under biocompatible conditions, and, for in vivo applications, must be nontoxic to cells and organisms. Additionally, it is helpful if one reactive group is small and therefore minimally perturbing of a biomolecule into which it has been introduced either chemically or biosynthetically. Examples from the past decade suggest that a promising strategy for bioorthogonal reaction development begins with an analysis of functional group and reactivity space outside those defined by nature. Issues such as stability of reactants and products (particularly in water), kinetics, and unwanted side reactivity with biofunctionalities must be addressed, ideally guided by detailed mechanistic studies. Finally, the reaction must be tested in a variety of environments, escalating from aqueous media to biomolecule solutions to cultured cells and, for the most optimized transformations, to live organisms.
9 JAN
9:40 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Biotech downturn survival school
Our panelists have seen the worst, and made it through to the other side. Join us for downturn survival school as our panelists talk about what sets apart the ones who make it through tough times.
These panalists think it will be specialist capital year to shine while the general capital is still sitting on the sidelines
JJ Kang
CEO
Appia Bio
“2023 was a tough year while 2020 was a boon year to start a company. We will continue to see these cycles; many of these new CEOs have never seen a biotech downturn yet and may not know how to preserve capital for the downturn”.
“Doing a partnership with Kite Pharmaceuticals early in our startp allowed us to get work done without risking a lot of capital, even if it means equity and asset dilution. That makes sense. However even if you are small insist on being an equal partner.”
“There are many investors we talk to who do not want to invest in cell therapy. Too risky now”
Carl Gordon
Managing Partner
OrbiMed Advisors
There are many macroeconomic factors affecting investment and capital today which will carry on through 2024. Not raising money when you do not need money is a bad philosophy. Always bbe raising captial. This is especially true when you have to rely on hedge funds. Parnerships howeve are sometimes the only way for small biotechs to leverage their strengths.
Joshua Boger
Executive Chair
Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Boger: Expect volatility for 2024. This environment feels very different than past downturns.
Even in downturns there is still lots of capital; remember access to human capital is better in a downturn and is easier to access; however it has become harder to get drug approvals
The panelists agree that access to capital and funding will be as tricky in 2024 than 2023. They did
suggest that a new funding avenue, private credit, may be a source of capital. This is discussed below:
When thinking about a private alternative investment asset class, the first thing that springs to mind is private equity. But there’s one more asset class with the word private in its name that has recently gained much attention. We’re talking about private credit.
Indeed, this once little-known investment strategy is now growing rapidly in popularity, offering private investors worldwide an exciting opportunity to diversify their portfolio with, in theory, less risky investments that yield significant returns.
- Private credit investments refer to investors lending money to companies who then repay the loan at a given interest rate within the predetermined period.
- The private credit market has grown significantly over the past years, rising from $875 million in 2020 to $1.4 trillion at the beginning of 2023.
Please WATCH VIDEO BY GOLDMAN SACHS ON PRIVATE CREDIT
10:50 AM – 11:20 AM PST
The New Molecule: How breakthrough technologies are actually changing pharma R&D
Join us for a look at how AI, machine learning and generative technologies are actually being applied inside drugmakers’ labs. We’ll explore how new technologies are being used, their implications, how they intersect with regulatory and IP issues and how this fast-changing field is likely to evolve.
Kailash Swarna
Managing Director & Global Life Sciences Clinical Development Lead
Accenture
Artificial Intelligence is making impact in a grand way on biology in three aspects:
- Speeding up target validation: now we can get through 300 molecules a day
- Predicition like AlphaFold is doing; molecular simulations
- Document submission especially with regulatory and IND submissions
Pamela Carroll
COO
Isomorphic Labs formerly of AlphaFold
We were first with Novartis at last year JPM and was one year old but parnering with them in that initial year was very important for sealing the deal.
They are looking now at neurologic diseases like ALS. She wondered whether ALS is actually multiple diseases and we need to stratify patients like we do in oncology trials. Their main competion is the whole tech world like Amazon, Google and other Machine Learning companies so being a tech player in the biotech world means you are not just competing with other biotechs but large tech companies as well.
Jorge Conde
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz
Need is still great for drug discovery; early adopters show AI tools can be used in big pharma. There are lots of applications of AI in managing care; a lot of back office applications including patient triaging. He does not see big AI mergers with pharma companies – this will be mainly partnerships not M&A deals
Alicyn Campbell
Chief Scientific Officer
Evinova, a Healthtech Subsidiary of the AstraZeneca Group
There is a need to turn AI for real world example. For example AI tools were used in clinical trials to determine patient cohorts with pneumonitis. At Evinova they are determining how AI can hel[p show clinical benefit with respect to efficacy and safety
Joshua Boger at #JPM24 (Brian Benton Photography)
January 12, 2024 09:06 AM ESTUpdated 10:00 AM PeopleStartups
Vertex founder Joshua Boger on surviving downturns, ‘painful’ partnerships, and the importance of culture: #JPM24
Andrew Dunn
Biopharma Correspondent
While the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference was full of voices of measured optimism, rooting for the market to bounce back in 2024, one longtime biotech leader warned against setting any firm expectations.
Instead of predicting when the downturn may end, Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder Joshua Boger said he advises biotech leaders to expect — and plan for — volatility. Speaking Tuesday on an Endpoints News panel alongside OrbiMed’s Carl Gordon and Appia Bio CEO JJ Kang, Boger shared lessons learned on surviving downturns, striking pharma deals, and the importance of keeping a company’s culture based on his two decades of founding and leading Vertex as CEO from 1989 to 2009. The 72-year-old is now serving as executive chairman of Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, a startup developing a rare disease drug.
“I never experienced a straight line up,” Boger said. “Everything had its cycles, and it was how you respond to the cycle, not by predicting when the end is going to be, but just by responding to the present situation.”
At Boger’s first appearance at the JP Morgan conference in 1991, he said the conference’s theme was the end of biotech financing. Just a few months later, Regeneron successfully went public, rapidly changing the outlook for the whole field.
“We had no idea we were ever going to take public money,” he said. “When Regeneron did their IPO, we went, ‘Whoa, there’s something happening here,’ and we pivoted quickly.”
Vertex went public later that year. Throughout his 20-year tenure, Boger said no pharma company ever made an acquisition offer for Vertex, which now commands a market value of $110 billion and recently won the first FDA approval for a CRISPR gene editing therapy.
“We had an uber corporate policy to always make ourselves more expensive than anyone would stomach,” Boger said.
However, Vertex did strike a range of partnerships with Big Pharmas, which Boger described as a painful but necessary part of running a biotech startup.
“It’s impossible for a partnership not to slow you down,” he said. “You can and should try as hard as you can not to do that, but just count on it. They’ll slow you down.”
Boger said startups should insist on being equal partners in pharma deals, at least making sure they have a seat at a partner’s development meetings.
“Realize they’re going to be painful, it’s going to be horrible, and you need to do it,” Boger said.
While Vertex suffered through layoffs, stock price plunges, and trial failures, Boger credited a focus on culture as key to its long-term success.
“It’s the most important ingredient for a successful company,” he said. “Technology is acquirable. Culture is not acquirable. There are 10 companies that will fail because of culture for every one that succeeds, and the successful companies in retrospect will almost always have special cultural aspects that kept them through those downtimes.”
JPM24 opens with ADCs the hottest ticket in San Francisco
By Annalee ArmstrongJan 8, 2024 6:30am
Source: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/jpm24-opens-adcs-hottest-ticket-san-francisco
The overall deal flow in biopharma tapered off in 2023 but the big companies sure know what they want (what they really, really want), according to a new report from J.P. Morgan.
And that’s antibody-drug conjugates, which drove a fourth-quarter spike in licensing deal proceeds and provided a glimmer of hope to an industry battered by outside forces and grim financing prospects.
J.P. Morgan’s annual 2023 Biopharma Licensing and Venture Report arrived on the eve of the firm’s famous conference, which is set to welcome thousands of attendees in San Francisco today—East Coast weather permitting.
2023 was tough, but clinical biotechs still had a lot of opportunities to wheel and deal, according to J.P. Morgan. While licensing deals, venture investments, M&A and IPOs were down overall in the fourth quarter, deal values stayed fairly high thanks to a flurry of late-stage tie ups.
Follow the Fierce team’s coverage of the 2024 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference here.
Biopharma licensing partnerships accounted for $63 billion in total value during the fourth quarter from 108 deals. Just one deal—Merck’s ADC partnership with Daiichi Sankyo—accounted for $22 billion of that. Another huge one was another ADC bet, with Bristol Myers Squibb signing on to work with SystImmune for a total value of $8.4 billion. If you exclude the Merck deal, the total value of these partnerships is still higher than the previous quarter, which ended with $32.1 billion.
The total number of licensing deals compares to 149 in the same quarter a year earlier, 195 for Q4 2021 and 223 for Q4 2022.
As for venture investments, the year closed out with $17 billion total across 250 rounds, thanks to $3.5 billion earned through 79 rounds in the last quarter. Aiolos Bio snagged the title of largest venture round of the quarter with $245 million, which also proved to be the largest series A, too.
There was just one IPO in all of the fourth quarter—Cargo Therapeutics making the plunge for $300 million—and 13 overall for the year. It’s a far cry from the heyday of 2021 and experts are still unsure what 2024 will hold. J.P. Morgan reported $2.5 billion raised from 12 completed biopharma IPOs for the year on Nasdaq and NYSE. Nine out of the 12 companies had clinical programs when they took the leap to the public markets. As of December 13, five of the companies were trading above their IPO price.
As for M&A, December saw a rush of Big Pharmas snapping up companies around Christmas. J.P. Morgan tallied the fourth quarter at $37.6 billion and $128.8 billion across 112 total acquisitions for all of 2023.
AbbVie was the top buyer of the quarter with the two largest acquisitions thanks to the $10 billion outlay for ImmunoGen and $8.7 billion buy of Cerevel Therapeutics.
All of this adds up to 270 total deals in the fourth quarter total, which is lower than the third quarter which exceeded 300.
J.P. Morgan sees some big potential for smaller biopharmas looking for licensing partners, as Big Pharmas have been handing out larger upfront payments for the deals they really want.
Cancer was once again the most in-demand therapeutic areas, reaching a new height of $86.1 billion in 2023. Followed by $21.1 billion for neurological disorders.
For More Articles on Real Time Conference Coverage in this Open Access Scientific Journal see:
Part One: The Process of Real Time Coverage using Social Media
Part Two: List of BioTech Conferences 2013 to Present
https://worldmedicalinnovation.org/
https://event.technologyreview.com/emtech-digital-2022/agenda-overview
“I am humbled to be included among the illustrious scientists who have been honored by the Warren Alpert Foundation for their contributions to the treatment and cure of human disease in its 30+ year history. It is also recognition of the many investigators who have labored for decades to realize the promise of the immune system in treating cancer.”
“The award is a great honor and a wonderful recognition of our work.”
“I am extremely honored to receive the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. I am very happy that our discovery of PD-1 in 1992 and subsequent 10-year basic research on PD-1 led to its clinical application as a novel cancer immunotherapy. I hope this development will encourage many scientists working in the basic biomedical field.”
“I am truly honored to be a recipient of the Alpert Award. It is especially meaningful to be recognized by my colleagues for discoveries that helped define the biology of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways. The clinical translation of our fundamental understanding of these pathways illustrates the value of basic science research, and I hope this inspires other scientists.”
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