July 3, 2025 • 51 mins
"If a company isn't IPO-ready, it better be M&A-ready," says Nanna Lüneborg of Forbion. She and co-founder Sander Slootweg sit down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sam Fazeli to explain Forbion’s blueprint for success in Europe’s maturing biotech ecosystem. From incubating CNS-focused gene therapy startups to executing €100M+ financing rounds, Forbion’s thesis is rooted in scientific rigor and commercially sound exits. They also share how Europe’s capital scarcity offers hidden advantages—and why late-stage buyers still pay up for must-have innovation.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to another episode of Bloomberg Intelligence Vanguards of Healthcare podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Where we speak with the leaders at.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The forefront of change in the healthcare industry. My name
is Sam Fazzelli and I'm a farmer biotech analyst at
Bloomberg Intelligence, the in house research arm of Bloomberg. I'm
thrilled to welcome Sandras Lutweg, managing partner and co founder
of ab and Amoral Capital Life Sciences in two thousand
and then in two thousand and six of fourbion, and
(00:38):
also we have today with us and Nana Luneberg, who
is general partner at four bion. And Nana was a
partner at Nova Ventures for ten years before joining four beyond.
So fourbion is one of the leading European life science vcs,
founded over twenty years ago, as we said, with funds
(00:59):
and management of five billion euros, so pretty chunky numbers here.
Across eleven funds. Fobian has made over one hundred investments
since the late nineties. Fobian takes a platform approach, enabling
its funds to support biotechs through their life cycle through
company building and then company expansion, and only in October
twenty twenty four, six or so months ago the company
(01:23):
the group raised over two billion euros for two new funds,
its largest fundraising today, which is a great sign for
venture capital world biotech in what may appear to be
or is a bleak time at the minute. And we're
going to talk a lot about this detail on exits.
They've had several exits six of billion dollar plus since
(01:44):
twenty twenty three, including more recently Yellow Jersey Therapeutics, Marianna Oncology,
and Iolos Bio. Right, so we're going to start by
thinking just very big picture. Here does fourbyond sit in
the venture community?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
What is the.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
How do you position yourself? You must lead them, sure,
but just tell us a little bit about your big
picture approach.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yes, thanks Sam for this great intro. Yes. Well, maybe
first for those listeners that may not be too familiar
with the way that the venture industry is shaped and
the role that a venture is taking and venture backed companies
are taking in the ecosystem. So I think in the
(02:33):
last decade to two decades there has been a reshaping
of the industry whereby a lot of the innovation now
comes from VC and VC backed companies, notably eighty percent
of newly approved drugs come originally from biotechs which have
been venture backed. So I think that that has a
backdrop to our overall role in the industry. And so
(02:58):
I think the way we are set up using a
platform approach with multiple fund strategies under one roof, essentially
leveraging one back office, we can fund companies with the
first few hundred thousand to see if there's even a
possibility of starting a company around a certain for instance,
academic invention, all the way through to companies that have
(03:21):
to fund their own pivotal registration studies so face two
B phase three studies and which for some companies can
encompass up to thousands of patients. Are therefore very capital intensive,
and these are for instance finance from our Growth Fund,
which is one of the largest funds of its kind
in Europe. This is part of the two billion plus
(03:43):
overall fundraising at the one point two billion Growth Fund
is our sort of biggest fund that is catering to
this late stage end of the market. So I think,
if you want to describe us in rough strokes, this
is what we are. And we can also fund companies
through their journey from early stages. For instance, our Fourbian
Ventures fund can fund companies that have been set up
(04:05):
by our JV sister fund called Biogeneration Ventures, which is
set up to mostly do company creation around academic startups
and Forbian Growth, can fund companies that have been accepted
or that have been financed before by Fobian Ventures, so
we can cover the whole development value chain.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Thanks for that, Sandra.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So, Nana, you've relatively recently joined Fobion from another venture house,
so I'd be interested in your perspective as to what
differentiates Forbion related to other vcs, because I'm pretty sure
you've experienced a whole bunch of other vcs at Nova
Ventures in terms of co investments, et cetera. And what
(04:48):
makes it the right partner and what drew you there?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Yeah, I think Fabian is by now one of the
largest European firms, and I think that definitely is a
core part of Fourbien's identity that we are European firms.
We are predominantly investing in European companies, so that obviously
we do US investments as well, and I think that
that is a slightly different identity compared to a lot
(05:10):
of our very talented colleagues of course across the pond,
and obviously in Overholdings is also by now an extremely
global firm, so I think that was actually what really
attracted me to join Forbien that you know, by now,
I think the European biotech ecosystem has really reached a
state of maturity where it makes sense to not only
(05:31):
fund early stage exciting innovation and exciting science as a
center described, but actually, you know, the European biotech environment
has got to a point where it also makes sense
to have a more dedicated later stage investment activity really
focused on the European opportunities and building data stage companies
in Europe. I think it's a pretty remarkable development we've seen.
(05:54):
I think when I first started in in venture, I
was actually all the way back in two thousand and
eight where I was where for UK based for a
mapposite capital. I think the idea at that point of
private companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars or euros
to fund clinical development in Europe was pretty unheard of,
and I think these days it's if not an everyday occurrence,
(06:15):
then you know, fairly regular occurrents that we have one
hundred plus million financing rounds in European based biotech companies.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
We have an interesting situation here. We have two large
VC firms based out of the Benelux for want of
a better phrase, right yourselves and another one, and we
have received quite a lot of VC activity and also
you know novel ventures, I guess out of let's say this,
it's Sarta Copenhagen. And then we have companies that are
doing super well. So our Genics Links was one of
(06:45):
the success stories which son of he bought gen Mab
and Zealand just to name a few.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Not necessarily.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
One of the things we never do here is give
any investment advice or anything like that. So just just
it's just picking some names up here. What is it
about the Benelux? What is it that in that ecosystem
that's made it such a successful area for biotech? I
mean there's other countries that have succeeded. You know, we
(07:13):
have companies in other areas BioNTech Germany, but just maybe
took us through what it is that you think has
given you that little age.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well talking about Benelux, I think you know, if you
go back in history, we don't have a lot of
natural resources in Benelux, so we always had to make
our living trading with neighboring countries and investing. And some
say that the first venture capital was invented by the
East Indies Company, where people could invest in a ship
(07:42):
and if it would make it back home filled with spices,
then people would make an eighty times multiple. But many
ships never returned. Of course, I think this merchant's mentality.
I think that's ingrained in our culture, so I think
that is important. And then if you look at the
the countries, I think they're easily accessible in terms of
(08:04):
you know, attracting workforce, good quality of life, good schools,
people speak their languages, good financial infrastructure. So I think
to set up a company and good tex uh set
up for biotechs, especially companies ultimately generating royalties and et cetera,
(08:25):
et cetera. So I think it's a good place. But
then there is also a lot of capital available locally,
as you said, from both vcs, but also from governmental sources.
As you may have read some time ago, the Netherlands
is trying to position itself as a leading biotech hub,
also making from the government's advantage points. Money is available
(08:46):
for various stages of company formation, all the way through
to financing parts of manufacturing setups or clinical trials. So
I think overall it's a good place for biotech to grow,
and of course that can only happen based on world
class science. So I think if you consider the output
from Beenelux universities, I think it's been pretty pretty strong.
(09:10):
So I think that's my best explanation why. Indeed some
of the bigger and better companies as well as some
of the bigger vcs are Banelux and also Denmark. If
we extend the Banelux buy a little bit into Denmark,
the Denmark is definitely also great breeding ground for good
companies like Zealand.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
For I'm assuming you agree with that, Nana.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think many of the characteristics that
send the outlined about you know, the Benelux all being
fairly small countries and needing needing therefore to have a
global outlook and be very willing trading partners obviously applies
in exactly the same manner to Scandinavia as well, and
maybe Stetmark in particular.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean there's two other positives. Everybody in business in
both countries speaks better English than some English people, and
that helps because business is conducted and most people have
met are very.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Nice, so that really helps.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Right, thinking about the overarching thesis that the that you
have as regards the industry, is there one that you're
specifically looking at or that you want to talk about,
because we're in a period of turmoil in the biotech
funding arena and you've just raised two billion euros, the
(10:25):
assumption being that you're looking for meaningful multiple exits, and
of course the I p O market's looking bleak at
the minute, MNA is happening, But just took us through
what your overarching industry thesis is at the minute.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
I think, as Sandra's added by saying, you know that
this whole idea of being the innovation engine of the
farmer industry, I think this is really biotechs role, and
I think this is Furbien's role as well. I think
what Fbien has historically been good at is finding companies
that are developing products that eventually larger farmer companies want
(11:01):
to buy. You know, most of our exits over the years,
most of the way that we have generated a return
for our investors is through M and A so to
selling our companies to farmer and so I think having
that extremely product focused mentality of really trying to identify
innovation where we can see this is going to be
an exciting product that we can imagine that a farmer
(11:23):
company would want to acquire at some point and bring
in as part of their product portfolio. And it goes
back to the sort of the very fundamental idea of
is this a product that is really going to benefit
patients where there's a cleon met need and where we
think there's a significant enough patient population that you can
build a really interesting product opportunity around that. And I
(11:44):
think Forbian has historically and continues to be extremely driven
by that fundamental scientific analysis of sort of, you know,
what is really the innovation here and what does the
potential product look like, rather than necessarily trying to follow
what is kind of in vogue at the moment in
terms of public market interest with kind of waxes and
(12:05):
ways and moves actually in a much faster time frame
than the speed of drug development, which obviously moves over
multiple years. So I think the only way that we
can live through those different market cycles is by staying
true to fundamentals in terms of science, and then also
staying true to fundamentals in terms of basic kind of
commercial principles of not buying something for more than we
(12:28):
think we can sell it for at the end of
the day.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And also being rooted in Europe and the European capital markets,
the public capital markets never having been super receptive for
by the companies. I think part of our thesis is
indeed always that we build companies in principle for M
and A exits, and therefore the companies are not dependent
on an IPO. By the way, if and when companies
(12:53):
would IPO, the exchange of choice would be would be nastac.
But as the companies are are not dependent on that,
and we do our sort of exit due diligence on
investments before we actually invest a single euro, we do
have a pretty good view as to which pharmas, based
(13:13):
on gaps in their pipelines, are the interested potential buyers
at the end of the execution of the business plan.
So I think the fact that the public markets in
the US are now relatively closed means that especially the
lad stage companies are very dependent on late stage private capital,
of which there is not a lot available. And as
(13:34):
I just mentioned we just raised a pretty substantial fund,
so you can imagine that they know to find us,
and therefore I think overall we also see pretty attractive
valuations entry valuations. The flip side of that, of course,
is that when it goes to the existing portfolio, there
of course we need to make sure that the companies
(13:56):
are well funded through to the next meaningful inflection points.
And that means that in today's market, you can enter
at attractive valuations, but you also have to reserve cautiously
so that you can also fund companies to the next
value inflection points in case that is needed to get
ultimately to the exit. So it has both sides of
(14:17):
the attractive entry point, but also you have to be
very cautious in capital budgeting for future rounds.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Actually, talking about that particular point, what is your at
what point do you start getting uncomfortable? Eight years, five years,
ten years into the life of a company.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
I think I don't think that's necessarily a point of
being uncomfortable. I mean, I think obviously you can have
a you typically have a kind of a fun lifetime,
and the typical fund lifetime in our industry is ten years.
On the other hand, if we would imagine that we
had been investors in Biontic, sadly we weren't, but if
we had been, and we've been in that company for
ten years, we'd probably still be feeling pretty happy about that.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
So, I think very.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Much depends on what's happening in that specific company.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right there is one element I want to touch on
before I ask you to give us an example that
would kind of underline your investment process. I heard at
the AACR conference, which is the American Academy for Cancer Research.
They have a pre event that one of our friends
(15:25):
at MPM Capital and a few other groups together set
up which is for partnering, et cetera. And Susan gold
Braid from Astrosenka was on the on a panel and
somebody asked about i RA and the impact of the
shortened loss of exclusivity for small molecules, the so called
pill penalty, and.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
She gave a very interesting answer. She said that.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
She's less worried about loss of exclusivity these days than
loss of relevance. Now, how do you plan for that,
given that you're looking ten years or five years or
whatever years down the road? Looking at the holes in
farmer company, which you suggested yourself, pipelines.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
How do you bring that together?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Is it just intuition, gut feel or is there a
process which takes us into the process conversation.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah, I think maintaining relevance is, you know, it's an
interesting way of putting it. And I think, you know,
maybe what's happening, what's been happening over the last four
or five years with the incredible emergence of the GLP
one medicines and the impact that that's already had on
our entire industry. I think it's an excellent example of that.
And I think you know that anyone developing drugs that
(16:42):
are impacting actually any disease that has any kind of
association with cardiovascular health or obesity as a as a comorbidity,
which is you know, a lot, really a lot of diseases,
they would be asking themselves this question is, what does
the fact that in years so many more patients with
(17:02):
type two diabetes and severe obesity will be treated with
GLP one drugs? What does that mean for the relevance
of my molecule and of my mechanism. So I think,
you know, I think I don't think you can necessarily
always have a perfect process in taste that takes that
into account. Obviously, the wonderful thing about our industry is
kind of the innovation and the impact that that can
(17:23):
have on patients. And when something that is such a
major innovation comes along, it clearly has an impact across
many other different development programs.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But I think it's a very good point. And how
we incorporate this in our deal assessment and due diligence
process I think is first of all, that we run
a combined deal flow process between all our funds. That
means that the whole investment team, everyone coming from very
different specialty areas, including some of our core operating partners
(17:53):
and advisors, they all sit together on a weekly basis.
And you have to take a very holistic approach towards
civic diseases for the point that none are made, especially
if you talk about you know, visity and the influence
on all the combilities or just inflammatory processes of course
are involved in many diseases that at least you can
(18:14):
sort of say where might this have an impact? And
then throughout the process you have to get all the
right advisors and key opinion leaders in to hear their
opinions from their helicopter views on their respective fields, how
they view things, and then you just have to over
time die trade to investment theasies. But sometimes it's more
(18:35):
on art than a science. Indeed, if you talk about
early stage assets or platform technologies that will have their
use eight ten years down the pike, then of course
it becomes difficult. But you know as not As said
in the beginning, I think we like to take a
very fundamental approach where we really go deep into the
science but also into the adjustable markets and competing approaches,
(18:57):
and then we try to do the best we can
and so far that has been delivering good, good results
to our investors. So I think, of course, going forward,
I can imagine that also AI will start to play
a bigger role there as we are already seeing. But
to date it has been mostly a team a team approach.
(19:19):
We have over thirty investment professionals with different backgrounds on
our team.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Right, we're going to come back to the topic of AI.
We can't have a conversation with that AI. I'm not
going to do all on it too much. But one
of the things I was always wondering is because you,
as a well known European BC, I'm pretty sure get
a deluge of pitches or folks trying to pitch. How
often have you found the opposite? You think, that's really
(19:48):
cool science. We are going to go and see we
can make that into a company, as opposed to a
pitch coming in. You know, you pick up nature, you go,
that's interesting. Let me go and see if I can
get that into a company, for example, Nature Science, whichever
your favorite journalists.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean, I guess. I think Vector is a
nice example of this.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
So this is a company that has been founded by
Forbien and it's actually one of the founders of Fbian
as well, Santa Fan Davinso who was the originator of this.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
And it's really using the.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Idea of gene therapy to deliver large molecules into the brain,
which is obviously historically been extremely difficult. And there are
certain things that you can do with antibodies that you
can't do as well or as easily with small molecules.
Are the modalities and that are particularly well suited for
treating some of the most difficult neurodegenerative diseases. And he
(20:39):
had the idea of combining the delivery mechanism of gene
therapy with biologics and seeing we could make an exceptional
leading company to tackle neugegenerative diseases on that basis. That
company was founded six seven years ago and and now
(21:00):
is about to start clinical development quite shortly, with Fourbien
still being one of the leading generalders.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Of course, I guess that's one of the aspects of
when you start at the very very basic science, it
takes time, and so you need people who are patient
to be able to have patient money, which goes back
to that thing of what is the how long is
your time horizon for the investment, which of course you
gave a very clear answer to.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It has to be a mixed for that reason because
the investors they like, of course the impact that we
create on devastating diseases for instance, like als, which is
the leading indication for victory, but they also like seeing
money and coming back with a multiple within a reasonable
time frame, so it has to be a mix. So
the mathematical answer to your question is that in the
(21:48):
venture strategy, one third are companies that we build and
two thirds are companies that we select to bring them
to the next stage. And that is also because these
built opportunities are quite labor intensive, and simply you cannot
build fifteen companies within a two year timeframe unless you
have like four hundred people on the pay roll, which
(22:09):
is not our plans.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
There's very AI comes in right now. Let's get back
to that. I want to talk about Europe versus US
because and I don't care about the capital markets. Of
course I care about the capital markets. I used to
be in sales side investment banking, and one of the
reasons I thought, I either have to move to the
US or get out of this because it's very, very tough.
Now we've had great successes as I suggest, you know,
(22:33):
actually on being one of the genp being one of
them Shire in the UK, one of the originals, et cetera.
But putting the capital markets issue aside, because as an
investor you're agnostic to what happens to the company and
where they list In the end, assuming the management team
are able to fulfill the need of being a US
biotach versus European might take what about the getting to
(22:55):
that point, the science, et cetera. We are having what
seems like from a distance at least pressure on US
science base from the US administration cutting potentially cutting funding
for NIH National Science Foundation and the general And it's
not just specific to healthcare, because I'm understanding also that
(23:18):
there is a bit of a pressure on the STEM
front too. Have you noticed European governments have heard I've
seen folks on TV talk about numbers. We've seen all that,
But in reality, have you actually started seeing some active
(23:38):
efforts to try and use this opportunity to bring back
some of the great brains that we had who left,
or attract some of the US brains here to feed
the future science that makes another company in ten years time.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, I'm sure that on the microscale that some of
this is happening. But I think even before as some
of these developments regarding the availability of research funding in
the US, based on, for instance, the Drugy report. In Europe,
I think some governments had already woken up, and I
mentioned the Netherlands, but also France. They pledged I think
(24:14):
some of ten billion two growing the biotech industry. They
want to position themselves becoming the Boston of Europe. I
think the UK a similar number they made public of
ten billion that they want to make available in various
ways also for their biotech industry. So I think across
Europe there's definitely an impetus to grow this industry because
(24:36):
I think we're very good at it in Europe. I
think the quality of European science, if you just measure
it by patent filings and publications, I think is really high.
But the capital scars, which I think for us on
a smaller scale again is interesting because valuations are about
forty percent lower in Europe as a result of the
(24:57):
scarcity of capital compared to the US. If you look
at the overall ecosystem, we could definitely do with more
capital of private as well as in terms of government
funding and research funding. So yes, we're seeing on a
macro scale, we're seeing that Europe is weighing in in
terms of specific examples of attracting leading researchers or research
(25:20):
groups or nana. Have you already seen something.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Concrete, I mean, I'd say that we definitely see. I
guess we tend to always be recruiting from a pretty
global talent pool. We definitely, you know, when we're recruiting
leaders into our companies, we tend to see people being
interested driven by really what's happening kind of what is
the science, what is the innovation? If the enthusiastic about it,
(25:46):
I'd say we definitely are seeing a strong interest from
people who are loocate in the US, whether or not
the American nationals or Europeans wanting to return back to Europe,
whether that's a recent thing on. I'm not sure that
we necessarily see such a big change. I think we
see and then sort of in the in the aftermath
(26:06):
of COVID, I think we I think everyone has been
benefiting from feeling that it's much more feasible to really
have a global talent pool for sort of highly specialized
functions and attracting the best people regardless of where they're based.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Right, So, I mean I have a little this is
this this podcast is about you. But one of the
things I worry about is that these pledges are easy
to make. I'd love to see France and UK and
all the other countries have pledged actually flow the money.
But I think we're in a world where the country's
European countries are being pushed to increase their defense spending.
(26:42):
They also have to think about AI, which I think
AI is super important for sovereignty and the national security,
and they don't want to keep taxing their people, so
it's a difficult area to find the money to put
into this. So let's hope that they also view by
tach and life science is an important element.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Of national security.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Let's see, right, let's move get a little bit of
micro here, and I'm going to ask you a question
which a lot of us often ask companies. You know,
tell us what your favorite two products are, but give
us a not you know, which have However, you want
to answer this, some of your exciting portfolio companies may
be based that on expected newsflow this year or something.
(27:26):
Because I'm sure you love all your companies, but you know,
let's let's just try that.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah, we absolutely love all our children. But I think
maybe one company I'd like to highlight is as far Us.
So I think this is actually a really nice example
of a drue European homegrown success story. So it's a
company that was founded on the basis of groundbreaking research
out of the University of Leiden, and it's been funded
(27:53):
and incubated really by Fobion and by our system fund
by Generation Ventures really from the outset and to a
point where they've generated now clinical data. The company works
in rare diseases, so in lysosomal storage diseases, and it's
developing brain penetrant therapies that can you know, for one
of the first opportunities to really treat some of the
(28:15):
CNS manifestations of some of these devastating diseases, which mainly
impact children and adolescents unfortunately, and I think you know,
it's been in the news quite recently because we're very
proud that we've just been able to raise one hundred
and thirty two million euros in a large financing round
that actually funds development of these products through to registration
(28:36):
hopefully in two different diseases, and plus test them out
in smaller groups of patients for some other diseases as well.
So I think, you know, coming back to where we
started about being kind of the innovation engine of our industry,
I think this is an example where actually in a
small private company is able to take these medicines really
from the academic laboratory where some of the science was done,
(29:00):
and through to now into a phase three study and
hopefully to be available to the benefit of patients in
the next couple of years. And Obviously the clinical development
is being done globally with clinical sites in Europe but
also in the US and in South America and investigators
all over the world sort of participating in this. So
(29:20):
that's definitely one that we're very excited about and very
proud to be one of the main investors of as well.
A second company I think is exciting is New Map Therapeutics.
So this is a company based in Switzerland developing multi
specific antibody based therapies and they were sort of in
the in the news, I guess last year when they
(29:40):
had a very big transaction with J and J where
they spun out a single product from their pipeline into
a separate company called Yellow Jersey Therapeutics that the G
ANDJ then acquired. And it's a real example of a
big sort of trend we're seeing across our industry of
combining multiple targets in a single molecule to sort of
(30:00):
break the efficacy sealing, particularly in inflammatory diseases and the
rest of the rest of Newmap, if you like. Without
the Yellow Jersey asset continues and it is a well
funded company, and also as an example of I think
the sort of the type of innovation where Europe is
really strong building on this sort of heritage of our
(30:21):
biologics based companies. You already mentioned argen X and gen
Map obviously sort of two of the next generation leaders
in this area, and I think new Map could really
grow into be one of the next next leaders in
the European biotech scene as well well.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
The example I was going to give of another company
that we were at the root of which is New
Amsterdam Pharma. And to your points, we're also definitely not
in the business of giving investment advice, so I will
just stick to whatever public information is known about this company.
Because the DESPEC they became a public company. But we
(30:55):
co founded the company together with one of our operating partners,
Professor John Cassela who in his academic days was one
of the thought leaders in cardiovascular metabolic diseases, and we
found this asset that we actually already knew from a
prior life at MGEN, which was a SETEP inhibitor being
deprioritized for strategic reasons at MGEN. We were able to
(31:18):
get it back and form a company around the asset. Then,
as it had already gone through Phase two, we prepared
for Phase three studies, which indeed typically twenty years ago
we couldn't have finance because for a private company to
embark on a phase three study in cardiovascular it takes
(31:38):
a long lot of capital. But at the end of
that development there could be a very big market of
all the people that cannot get to their target cholesterol levels,
which is the drug doing. And since then, I think
several positive trials have been published by the company, but
also very recently, and that's why I wanted to mention them.
(32:00):
It was also shown in a sort of a meta trial,
a subtrial within the larger trial focused on certain Alzheimer's
markers that also this drug seems to have a very
positive effect on a very important Alzheimer's marker, showing that
you know, lipids, especially toxic lipids, also play an important
role in disease progression of Alzheimer's. So we may see
(32:24):
here an approach that can target both cardiovascular as well
as a specific brain disease, all centered around the role
of lipids, different types of lipids in the body. So yeah,
that's another one we're very proud of and excited about.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It reminds me of one of these small companies in
Denmark called nov Nordisks developing GLP ones not only format
about it and obviously not the lipid targeting drug.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
But at the end of the day, if you lose
weight and you manage.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Your cardiovascular risk, and they're also being after Alzheimer's, it's
particular subset of Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
But interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So let's see that data reads out this year. So
now I'm convinced you guys have got the Mitus touch
and everything you touch turns to gold. But there might
have been one or two that didn't do you want it.
I don't want any examples of companies that didn't work out,
But I want to focus on when things go wrong,
what is it that drives that is there? And I'm
(33:25):
pretty sure that we all learned lessons from our mistakes.
It doesn't have to be a mistake. Drug development is
a risky process. Things just failed because the biological rationale
wasn't exactly right, or the molecule didn't turn out to
be exactly right, or what a plethoro other issues. But
if you wanted to just focus on that for a moment,
and how to give us some thought processes as to
(33:47):
what happened and how that focuses you further going forward,
and also in their interview, perhaps how much of it
is to do with perhaps founders having getting in the
way a little bit because that you know, it's not
the first time that would have happened. You know, they
have different aspirations and perhaps so just talk us through that, please.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I mean, I think you highlighted the role of the team.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
I think we see the team as one of the
most important aspects.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
I think you know, I think we all know how
incredibly complex drug development is as a process. So having
the right team around an innovation to take it from
the laboratory or from the academic founders, if that's the case,
and into first pre clinical and subsequently clinical development. I
(34:40):
think it's important to appreciate that every single stage in
the sort of journey of a discovery or scientific discovery
to actually eventually becoming a medicine, every single stage really
is its own highly specialized process that requires leadership with
that particular particular set of expertise around it in order
(35:01):
to make the right choices in order to not walk
into blind spots. And I think that's one of the
reasons why I think Forbrin has invested really heavily in
having operating partners and venture partners that have deep expertise
in different both stages of drug development and in different
therapeutic areas, so that we can as much as possible
(35:21):
help our small companies or sort of emerging companies take
the right decisions and tap into the right networks and
get the right support along along that journey and hopefully
minimize the risk for four of us as a as
a as a joint team with them to make some
of those mistakes.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And maybe to add to that, so I would say,
you know, for a small biotech to take too many shortcuts,
I think that is what we have seen to cause failure,
for instance, clinical trials being too small, or trying to
cram too many different endpoints into a single trial, or
(35:59):
going for for the market opportunity that was the biggest
but maybe also one of the riskier And so I
think what we have learned from that is, as we
mentioned before, it's very important to properly resource companies, both
in terms of the team as none as said, but
also in terms of the setup of clinical trials and
(36:22):
to really incorporate into those trials concrete feedback from pharma
as to what it is that they would like to
see at the end of the trial, and not just
in terms of the clinical outcome, but also any blood markers,
any stratification, anything that they would like to see, so
that it's not the case that you think you have
a positive trial and then you do your BD and
(36:45):
you have your discussions with pharma and then they said, oh,
had you only done this or that, And of course
at that point in time, you cannot do that anymore.
So it's a long winded answer, but I think we
really try to do things to the standards of pharma,
which means that trials are more elaborate but also more expensive,
(37:07):
and I think with our larger funds and with the
concentrated transatlantic syndicates that we forge, I think we can
really accomplish this. And there, of course, the teams are
super important because you don't want to entrust a rookie
team with LI like for instance, with Verdiva, we structured
at four hundred and eleven million Series A rounds to
(37:27):
execute on several clinical studies in parallel, and you really
want a very experienced team there.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. Yeah, Unfortunately, I'm going to pick on both of
those as one of the reasons we get failures in
Europe because we don't have enough money. When you don't
have enough money, you can't attract the perhaps the right talent,
and even if the talents, then they can't execute on
their plan, so they have to cut corners and then
(37:54):
we beat them up because they didn't manage to get there,
which is which is a very sad situation to.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Be in in the U Y.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I'm sure it happens, but there's so many companies that
you kind of they're going to get lost in the
in the noise.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So great, let's let's let's talk about exits, IPOs, et cetera.
I heard, I heard.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
I think that your main strategy is to build companies
to be sold. If there's an IPO window that's open,
if a company is sellable, then to me, that suggests
it's also ipoable if you.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Want to go down that road. But what does the
current deal window look like you can take? But I
mean IPOs we know.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Are pretty much closed. Maybe the window now closed, But
how do you feel about the M and a window?
And we see them steals every JP Morgan investors wake
up every morning waiting for an announcement of a deal.
And we've recently had some decent deals, right, we just
had a good, nice licensing deal between Bristol Myers and
(38:53):
and BioNTech. And we've had some couple of biggish MNA
deals five billion dollars ten billion dollar takeouts, so son
of and then at the beginning of the year we
had Johnson and Johnson and inter Celler Therapeutics. So just
took us through what your perception is from obviously your companies,
and how much do you feel that M and A
(39:13):
market is alive and kicking, and and if there has
been just talk to me about this is if there
has been a little bit of a slowdown, maybe because
of the uncertainties of tariffs and most favored nations. It
just makes you sit back and thinking, Okay, look, I
can take an extra month before I do this.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Talk me through all.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
That to start with a letter. I think, yes, it's true.
I think farm I have been sort of assuming for
a couple of months await and see attitude with respect
to the things that you mentioned, but also, for instance,
you know what's going to be the new policy is
coming from the FDA, et cetera. So I think by
now things are are gradually shaking out, and therefore, across
(39:55):
our portfolio we're seeing discussions around potential m and A
pick up, so I think that is good. But again
touching on the things we discussed before, with the public
markets being relatively shut down and late stage private capital
being relatively scarce, I think some pharmas are trying to
(40:18):
do some bottom fishing. It's logical they think they can
buy some interesting assets at low prices. So that's why again,
I think it's very important to properly resource the company
so that they don't have to entertain any bids that
don't do justice to the value of the asset to
both investors and patients. So I think I would distinguish
(40:41):
between sort of nice to have assets for pharma, but
also they must have assets, and there I think we
still see a lot of competition and then paying full prices.
But for more nice to have assets, I think they're
currently to some extent bottom fishing.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yeah, I think the need for fun to acquire products
has not gone away, right, I mean, I think despite
whatever has been happening politically and in terms of you know, IPO,
market capital availability, et cetera. I mean I think those
things do obviously have a huge impact on our sector
because they impact the number of options that any biotech
(41:19):
CEO feels that he or she has in front of
them for refinancing the companies. But I think if you're
looking at it from Farmer's perspective, clearly the sort of
the you know, the patent cliff, the loss of revenue
from loss of exclusivity, even in the quite near term
timeframe from twenty five to twenty thirty, that has not
gone awigh, that that fundamental problem persists, and I think
(41:42):
the only way to address that is to acquire innovation
and acquire products. I think given the somewhat more restrictive
stance from competition authorities recently obviously Farmer has been much
more interested in doing these somewhat smaller deals, sort of
acquiring individual products, rather than doing larger mergers with commercial
stage companies. But I think again that that sort of placed,
(42:05):
you know, perfectly into the business model that that we
had Fobien are sort of invested in of investing in
private either pre clinical or clinical stage companies that then
at a at a certain point in clinical development, we
can we can hand off to Farmer and they will,
you know, take those those products over the finish line
(42:25):
to registration.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Okay, so I heard that the M and A market
is at least warming up, or is getting a little
bit hotter, or don't.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Know, whatever phrase you want to use.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
What is the hottest area in terms of is it immunology,
is it oncology, is it neuro is it cardiovascular?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Is it all of the above.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Do you have something that you go, we really need
to spend quite a lot more in this space, because
that's the I always ask this of heads of R
and DS that I speak to, What is what is
the obesity? What is the next obesity thing? You know,
We've had all these waves of college you drive, checkpoint inhibitors,
we had t andfs, we had statins and tacids. There's
(43:04):
always some wave coming up. What do you think is
going to be the next one?
Speaker 4 (43:09):
I'd say, I think that in the most recent big
big wave or big focus area I think that we've
seen has really been in the inflammatory disease or commune
disease area. And I think a big part of the
explanation that has been because of this. I think we
talked about earlier, for example, with the yellow Jersey acquisition
of combining different modalities in a single molecule and getting
(43:30):
significantly better efficacy. Also, there's been a lot of innovation
from biotech companies in making more long lasting so that
you can reduce the administration frequency, in particular in areas
like a topic dermatitis. If if kids can have an
injectable that they only have to take once every three
months or every six months, that's obviously far better than
(43:51):
something you have to take every week or every two weeks.
So I think that's been a really that's been a
really big area also across a lot of different farmer companies,
And I think part of the reason is that a
lot of these indication areas can actually become quite large markets,
and you can have the potential to develop some of
these drugs across multiple different disease areas as well, so
you can have a little bit of a you know,
(44:12):
a pipeline in a in a single product, whereas oncology
has clearly been somewhat more out of favor, notwithstanding what
we've recently seen with the veggief and and PDO one
deal making frenzy, which has been I'm.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Sure you're working on a PD one VEGF combo company.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
We've been we've been very we've been looking at a
lot of things in UH in this area. But yeah,
I think it's very hard to predict what's what's really
going to be UH, what's really going to be the
sort of the winning configuration if any from from from
this area.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Let me turn that on its head. If you don't
mind what area? Don't you want people to come and
pitch to antibiotics anti effectives? And now I know, Nana
in your one of the companies that you were involved
with before was revived. I don't know, Sandra, if you
guys were involved to and I know that team from
the Aerotherapeutics days and I was a happy shareholder of
(45:08):
ReViral from early days. So then that was a good
outcome in the end. Maybe it did or didn't work out,
I don't know. But what don't you want to see?
What is it that you go, Oh, that's no, let's
not look at that. That's just not even just even
the title of the of the pitch.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Is not right.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, I'm not sure there's many things that we completely
reject outright. I would say the bar for cell therapy
based products is pretty high. I think there's also an
area that we've seen a lot of farmer kind of
take a step back from even if they were engaged,
because it's just become it has turned out to be
very difficult to scale up these products. I think, on
(45:46):
the other hand, you know, taking the view of you know,
as a as a patient, as a citizen, as a taxpayer,
I think it's also it's encouraging to see that Legend
is now really making the success of their cell based
product and obviously showing william assive remission rates for patients.
That's great news. I think the approach that we've taken
is we're very enthusiastic about the sort of in vivo
(46:08):
carti approach, sort of of doing this, you know, taking
this to the next iteration, if you like, of developed
developing the benefits of carti products, but delivered as an
in vivo product instead of having as a cell based product.
And we're happy to be investors in Kapstan Therapeutics, which
is just announced today in fact that they've started their
(46:28):
human trials. And then I'd say another area that has
been a little bit out of favor, but where I
think we remain bullish is actually on gene therapy in
particular for rare diseases. It's also been something that both
in the public markets and from farmer you know, a
lot of a lot of farmers have actually divested their
gene therapy portfolios, and obviously a lot of the public
(46:49):
market investors also seem to be very negative on this.
I think we remain very optimistic about the potential for
really transformational benefits of gene therapy in a lot of
rare diseases. Forbien was one of the founding investors in
Unicure as well, and obviously they now have a product
on the market that's making a real difference to patient.
(47:10):
So I think that's where that's kind of where we
are happy to go against the current.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
I mean, honestly, five years ago somebody had come and
pitched an obesities idea, you would have gone no. If
we've been there, we've seen it. It's not easy, it's
a difficult market. And then of course now everybody wants
to be an obesity of some shape or form ameline
or GLP one or three g's, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
So right, let's finish up here, and.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I want to ask you just a couple of AI
questions how much is AI beginning to feature in your
own business, not in your companies that you're investing in,
or how AI is going to help drug development?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
How is it? Is it slowly feature?
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Is it becoming more and more parts of the consciousness
of the company.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yes, I would say so, but we're not front runners definitely.
But as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, with the
numbers of deals we're seeing now fifteen hundred plus on
an annual basis, I think to quickly reduce that number
to a more palatable number where you can really dive
(48:14):
deep into the science. I think that is part of
what keeps us busy and there I think AI can
play an important role to support the analyst in weading
to the deal flow, but also to proactively source deal
flow by connecting the dots on a publicly available data
from publications, from databases, with clinical data points, et cetera,
(48:41):
to come up with ideas and also with concrete deal
flow items. Although from our own account, we keep telling
you of what percentage of for instance, the deal flow
in Europe of the deals that get funded we get
to see, and it's very close to one hundred percent,
So I think there are no deals that we're currently missing,
but I think we can use AI better to also
(49:01):
find the opportunities where we can build companies around those ideas.
For instance, right, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
We don't endorse any products here or anything like that,
but I did see a paper recently by deep Mind
called the Google Coscientist Now that, at least to my
simple mind, sounded fascinating. And you know you're going to say, okay,
go go and make my hypothesis in well, in fact
that I think one of the tests of it was
in motorneuron disease. So look, I mean I could keep
(49:32):
talking to you guys for hours, but I think our
time is up. I really appreciate your candor, your openness
and your time. I think you've given me three or
four other podcast ideas. So I'm going to come back
to and ask you to get some of your companies
on because it sounds like there's some very interesting ideas
(49:54):
that have been tested that I would love to talk
about and bring to our audience. So Nana Sander, thank
you very much for your time. And I really appreciate
the all the knowledge that you and I appreciate what
you do because it's you know it's important for you know,
I am a European, and I'm and I'm very proud
of it, and and and I love science, so I
(50:17):
hope that we can. We can I can be watching
these companies come out of science translated to beautiful therapies
and important therapies for for patients.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Thank you well, thank you very much. Sam. It was
a pleasure.
Speaker 6 (50:29):
Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
H
Welcome to another episode of Bloomberg Intelligence Vanguards of Healthcare podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Where we speak with the leaders at.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
The forefront of change in the healthcare industry. My name
is Sam Fazzelli and I'm a farmer biotech analyst at
Bloomberg Intelligence, the in house research arm of Bloomberg. I'm
thrilled to welcome Sandras Lutweg, managing partner and co founder
of ab and Amoral Capital Life Sciences in two thousand
and then in two thousand and six of fourbion, and
(00:38):
also we have today with us and Nana Luneberg, who
is general partner at four bion. And Nana was a
partner at Nova Ventures for ten years before joining four beyond.
So fourbion is one of the leading European life science vcs,
founded over twenty years ago, as we said, with funds
(00:59):
and management of five billion euros, so pretty chunky numbers here.
Across eleven funds. Fobian has made over one hundred investments
since the late nineties. Fobian takes a platform approach, enabling
its funds to support biotechs through their life cycle through
company building and then company expansion, and only in October
twenty twenty four, six or so months ago the company
(01:23):
the group raised over two billion euros for two new funds,
its largest fundraising today, which is a great sign for
venture capital world biotech in what may appear to be
or is a bleak time at the minute. And we're
going to talk a lot about this detail on exits.
They've had several exits six of billion dollar plus since
(01:44):
twenty twenty three, including more recently Yellow Jersey Therapeutics, Marianna Oncology,
and Iolos Bio. Right, so we're going to start by
thinking just very big picture. Here does fourbyond sit in
the venture community?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
What is the.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
How do you position yourself? You must lead them, sure,
but just tell us a little bit about your big
picture approach.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yes, thanks Sam for this great intro. Yes. Well, maybe
first for those listeners that may not be too familiar
with the way that the venture industry is shaped and
the role that a venture is taking and venture backed companies
are taking in the ecosystem. So I think in the
(02:33):
last decade to two decades there has been a reshaping
of the industry whereby a lot of the innovation now
comes from VC and VC backed companies, notably eighty percent
of newly approved drugs come originally from biotechs which have
been venture backed. So I think that that has a
backdrop to our overall role in the industry. And so
(02:58):
I think the way we are set up using a
platform approach with multiple fund strategies under one roof, essentially
leveraging one back office, we can fund companies with the
first few hundred thousand to see if there's even a
possibility of starting a company around a certain for instance,
academic invention, all the way through to companies that have
(03:21):
to fund their own pivotal registration studies so face two
B phase three studies and which for some companies can
encompass up to thousands of patients. Are therefore very capital intensive,
and these are for instance finance from our Growth Fund,
which is one of the largest funds of its kind
in Europe. This is part of the two billion plus
(03:43):
overall fundraising at the one point two billion Growth Fund
is our sort of biggest fund that is catering to
this late stage end of the market. So I think,
if you want to describe us in rough strokes, this
is what we are. And we can also fund companies
through their journey from early stages. For instance, our Fourbian
Ventures fund can fund companies that have been set up
(04:05):
by our JV sister fund called Biogeneration Ventures, which is
set up to mostly do company creation around academic startups
and Forbian Growth, can fund companies that have been accepted
or that have been financed before by Fobian Ventures, so
we can cover the whole development value chain.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Thanks for that, Sandra.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So, Nana, you've relatively recently joined Fobion from another venture house,
so I'd be interested in your perspective as to what
differentiates Forbion related to other vcs, because I'm pretty sure
you've experienced a whole bunch of other vcs at Nova
Ventures in terms of co investments, et cetera. And what
(04:48):
makes it the right partner and what drew you there?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Yeah, I think Fabian is by now one of the
largest European firms, and I think that definitely is a
core part of Fourbien's identity that we are European firms.
We are predominantly investing in European companies, so that obviously
we do US investments as well, and I think that
that is a slightly different identity compared to a lot
(05:10):
of our very talented colleagues of course across the pond,
and obviously in Overholdings is also by now an extremely
global firm, so I think that was actually what really
attracted me to join Forbien that you know, by now,
I think the European biotech ecosystem has really reached a
state of maturity where it makes sense to not only
(05:31):
fund early stage exciting innovation and exciting science as a
center described, but actually, you know, the European biotech environment
has got to a point where it also makes sense
to have a more dedicated later stage investment activity really
focused on the European opportunities and building data stage companies
in Europe. I think it's a pretty remarkable development we've seen.
(05:54):
I think when I first started in in venture, I
was actually all the way back in two thousand and
eight where I was where for UK based for a
mapposite capital. I think the idea at that point of
private companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars or euros
to fund clinical development in Europe was pretty unheard of,
and I think these days it's if not an everyday occurrence,
(06:15):
then you know, fairly regular occurrents that we have one
hundred plus million financing rounds in European based biotech companies.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
We have an interesting situation here. We have two large
VC firms based out of the Benelux for want of
a better phrase, right yourselves and another one, and we
have received quite a lot of VC activity and also
you know novel ventures, I guess out of let's say this,
it's Sarta Copenhagen. And then we have companies that are
doing super well. So our Genics Links was one of
(06:45):
the success stories which son of he bought gen Mab
and Zealand just to name a few.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Not necessarily.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
One of the things we never do here is give
any investment advice or anything like that. So just just
it's just picking some names up here. What is it
about the Benelux? What is it that in that ecosystem
that's made it such a successful area for biotech? I
mean there's other countries that have succeeded. You know, we
(07:13):
have companies in other areas BioNTech Germany, but just maybe
took us through what it is that you think has
given you that little age.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Well talking about Benelux, I think you know, if you
go back in history, we don't have a lot of
natural resources in Benelux, so we always had to make
our living trading with neighboring countries and investing. And some
say that the first venture capital was invented by the
East Indies Company, where people could invest in a ship
(07:42):
and if it would make it back home filled with spices,
then people would make an eighty times multiple. But many
ships never returned. Of course, I think this merchant's mentality.
I think that's ingrained in our culture, so I think
that is important. And then if you look at the
the countries, I think they're easily accessible in terms of
(08:04):
you know, attracting workforce, good quality of life, good schools,
people speak their languages, good financial infrastructure. So I think
to set up a company and good tex uh set
up for biotechs, especially companies ultimately generating royalties and et cetera,
(08:25):
et cetera. So I think it's a good place. But
then there is also a lot of capital available locally,
as you said, from both vcs, but also from governmental sources.
As you may have read some time ago, the Netherlands
is trying to position itself as a leading biotech hub,
also making from the government's advantage points. Money is available
(08:46):
for various stages of company formation, all the way through
to financing parts of manufacturing setups or clinical trials. So
I think overall it's a good place for biotech to grow,
and of course that can only happen based on world
class science. So I think if you consider the output
from Beenelux universities, I think it's been pretty pretty strong.
(09:10):
So I think that's my best explanation why. Indeed some
of the bigger and better companies as well as some
of the bigger vcs are Banelux and also Denmark. If
we extend the Banelux buy a little bit into Denmark,
the Denmark is definitely also great breeding ground for good
companies like Zealand.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
For I'm assuming you agree with that, Nana.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think many of the characteristics that
send the outlined about you know, the Benelux all being
fairly small countries and needing needing therefore to have a
global outlook and be very willing trading partners obviously applies
in exactly the same manner to Scandinavia as well, and
maybe Stetmark in particular.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean there's two other positives. Everybody in business in
both countries speaks better English than some English people, and
that helps because business is conducted and most people have
met are very.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Nice, so that really helps.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Right, thinking about the overarching thesis that the that you
have as regards the industry, is there one that you're
specifically looking at or that you want to talk about,
because we're in a period of turmoil in the biotech
funding arena and you've just raised two billion euros, the
(10:25):
assumption being that you're looking for meaningful multiple exits, and
of course the I p O market's looking bleak at
the minute, MNA is happening, But just took us through
what your overarching industry thesis is at the minute.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
I think, as Sandra's added by saying, you know that
this whole idea of being the innovation engine of the
farmer industry, I think this is really biotechs role, and
I think this is Furbien's role as well. I think
what Fbien has historically been good at is finding companies
that are developing products that eventually larger farmer companies want
(11:01):
to buy. You know, most of our exits over the years,
most of the way that we have generated a return
for our investors is through M and A so to
selling our companies to farmer and so I think having
that extremely product focused mentality of really trying to identify
innovation where we can see this is going to be
an exciting product that we can imagine that a farmer
(11:23):
company would want to acquire at some point and bring
in as part of their product portfolio. And it goes
back to the sort of the very fundamental idea of
is this a product that is really going to benefit
patients where there's a cleon met need and where we
think there's a significant enough patient population that you can
build a really interesting product opportunity around that. And I
(11:44):
think Forbian has historically and continues to be extremely driven
by that fundamental scientific analysis of sort of, you know,
what is really the innovation here and what does the
potential product look like, rather than necessarily trying to follow
what is kind of in vogue at the moment in
terms of public market interest with kind of waxes and
(12:05):
ways and moves actually in a much faster time frame
than the speed of drug development, which obviously moves over
multiple years. So I think the only way that we
can live through those different market cycles is by staying
true to fundamentals in terms of science, and then also
staying true to fundamentals in terms of basic kind of
commercial principles of not buying something for more than we
(12:28):
think we can sell it for at the end of
the day.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
And also being rooted in Europe and the European capital markets,
the public capital markets never having been super receptive for
by the companies. I think part of our thesis is
indeed always that we build companies in principle for M
and A exits, and therefore the companies are not dependent
on an IPO. By the way, if and when companies
(12:53):
would IPO, the exchange of choice would be would be nastac.
But as the companies are are not dependent on that,
and we do our sort of exit due diligence on
investments before we actually invest a single euro, we do
have a pretty good view as to which pharmas, based
(13:13):
on gaps in their pipelines, are the interested potential buyers
at the end of the execution of the business plan.
So I think the fact that the public markets in
the US are now relatively closed means that especially the
lad stage companies are very dependent on late stage private capital,
of which there is not a lot available. And as
(13:34):
I just mentioned we just raised a pretty substantial fund,
so you can imagine that they know to find us,
and therefore I think overall we also see pretty attractive
valuations entry valuations. The flip side of that, of course,
is that when it goes to the existing portfolio, there
of course we need to make sure that the companies
(13:56):
are well funded through to the next meaningful inflection points.
And that means that in today's market, you can enter
at attractive valuations, but you also have to reserve cautiously
so that you can also fund companies to the next
value inflection points in case that is needed to get
ultimately to the exit. So it has both sides of
(14:17):
the attractive entry point, but also you have to be
very cautious in capital budgeting for future rounds.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Actually, talking about that particular point, what is your at
what point do you start getting uncomfortable? Eight years, five years,
ten years into the life of a company.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
It's hard to say.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
I think I don't think that's necessarily a point of
being uncomfortable. I mean, I think obviously you can have
a you typically have a kind of a fun lifetime,
and the typical fund lifetime in our industry is ten years.
On the other hand, if we would imagine that we
had been investors in Biontic, sadly we weren't, but if
we had been, and we've been in that company for
ten years, we'd probably still be feeling pretty happy about that.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
So, I think very.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Much depends on what's happening in that specific company.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right there is one element I want to touch on
before I ask you to give us an example that
would kind of underline your investment process. I heard at
the AACR conference, which is the American Academy for Cancer Research.
They have a pre event that one of our friends
(15:25):
at MPM Capital and a few other groups together set
up which is for partnering, et cetera. And Susan gold
Braid from Astrosenka was on the on a panel and
somebody asked about i RA and the impact of the
shortened loss of exclusivity for small molecules, the so called
pill penalty, and.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
She gave a very interesting answer. She said that.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
She's less worried about loss of exclusivity these days than
loss of relevance. Now, how do you plan for that,
given that you're looking ten years or five years or
whatever years down the road? Looking at the holes in
farmer company, which you suggested yourself, pipelines.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
How do you bring that together?
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Is it just intuition, gut feel or is there a
process which takes us into the process conversation.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Yeah, I think maintaining relevance is, you know, it's an
interesting way of putting it. And I think, you know,
maybe what's happening, what's been happening over the last four
or five years with the incredible emergence of the GLP
one medicines and the impact that that's already had on
our entire industry. I think it's an excellent example of that.
And I think you know that anyone developing drugs that
(16:42):
are impacting actually any disease that has any kind of
association with cardiovascular health or obesity as a as a comorbidity,
which is you know, a lot, really a lot of diseases,
they would be asking themselves this question is, what does
the fact that in years so many more patients with
(17:02):
type two diabetes and severe obesity will be treated with
GLP one drugs? What does that mean for the relevance
of my molecule and of my mechanism. So I think,
you know, I think I don't think you can necessarily
always have a perfect process in taste that takes that
into account. Obviously, the wonderful thing about our industry is
kind of the innovation and the impact that that can
(17:23):
have on patients. And when something that is such a
major innovation comes along, it clearly has an impact across
many other different development programs.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But I think it's a very good point. And how
we incorporate this in our deal assessment and due diligence
process I think is first of all, that we run
a combined deal flow process between all our funds. That
means that the whole investment team, everyone coming from very
different specialty areas, including some of our core operating partners
(17:53):
and advisors, they all sit together on a weekly basis.
And you have to take a very holistic approach towards
civic diseases for the point that none are made, especially
if you talk about you know, visity and the influence
on all the combilities or just inflammatory processes of course
are involved in many diseases that at least you can
(18:14):
sort of say where might this have an impact? And
then throughout the process you have to get all the
right advisors and key opinion leaders in to hear their
opinions from their helicopter views on their respective fields, how
they view things, and then you just have to over
time die trade to investment theasies. But sometimes it's more
(18:35):
on art than a science. Indeed, if you talk about
early stage assets or platform technologies that will have their
use eight ten years down the pike, then of course
it becomes difficult. But you know as not As said
in the beginning, I think we like to take a
very fundamental approach where we really go deep into the
science but also into the adjustable markets and competing approaches,
(18:57):
and then we try to do the best we can
and so far that has been delivering good, good results
to our investors. So I think, of course, going forward,
I can imagine that also AI will start to play
a bigger role there as we are already seeing. But
to date it has been mostly a team a team approach.
(19:19):
We have over thirty investment professionals with different backgrounds on
our team.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Right, we're going to come back to the topic of AI.
We can't have a conversation with that AI. I'm not
going to do all on it too much. But one
of the things I was always wondering is because you,
as a well known European BC, I'm pretty sure get
a deluge of pitches or folks trying to pitch. How
often have you found the opposite? You think, that's really
(19:48):
cool science. We are going to go and see we
can make that into a company, as opposed to a
pitch coming in. You know, you pick up nature, you go,
that's interesting. Let me go and see if I can
get that into a company, for example, Nature Science, whichever
your favorite journalists.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean, I guess. I think Vector is a
nice example of this.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
So this is a company that has been founded by
Forbien and it's actually one of the founders of Fbian
as well, Santa Fan Davinso who was the originator of this.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
And it's really using the.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Idea of gene therapy to deliver large molecules into the brain,
which is obviously historically been extremely difficult. And there are
certain things that you can do with antibodies that you
can't do as well or as easily with small molecules.
Are the modalities and that are particularly well suited for
treating some of the most difficult neurodegenerative diseases. And he
(20:39):
had the idea of combining the delivery mechanism of gene
therapy with biologics and seeing we could make an exceptional
leading company to tackle neugegenerative diseases on that basis. That
company was founded six seven years ago and and now
(21:00):
is about to start clinical development quite shortly, with Fourbien
still being one of the leading generalders.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Of course, I guess that's one of the aspects of
when you start at the very very basic science, it
takes time, and so you need people who are patient
to be able to have patient money, which goes back
to that thing of what is the how long is
your time horizon for the investment, which of course you
gave a very clear answer to.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
It has to be a mixed for that reason because
the investors they like, of course the impact that we
create on devastating diseases for instance, like als, which is
the leading indication for victory, but they also like seeing
money and coming back with a multiple within a reasonable
time frame, so it has to be a mix. So
the mathematical answer to your question is that in the
(21:48):
venture strategy, one third are companies that we build and
two thirds are companies that we select to bring them
to the next stage. And that is also because these
built opportunities are quite labor intensive, and simply you cannot
build fifteen companies within a two year timeframe unless you
have like four hundred people on the pay roll, which
(22:09):
is not our plans.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
There's very AI comes in right now. Let's get back
to that. I want to talk about Europe versus US
because and I don't care about the capital markets. Of
course I care about the capital markets. I used to
be in sales side investment banking, and one of the
reasons I thought, I either have to move to the
US or get out of this because it's very, very tough.
Now we've had great successes as I suggest, you know,
(22:33):
actually on being one of the genp being one of
them Shire in the UK, one of the originals, et cetera.
But putting the capital markets issue aside, because as an
investor you're agnostic to what happens to the company and
where they list In the end, assuming the management team
are able to fulfill the need of being a US
biotach versus European might take what about the getting to
(22:55):
that point, the science, et cetera. We are having what
seems like from a distance at least pressure on US
science base from the US administration cutting potentially cutting funding
for NIH National Science Foundation and the general And it's
not just specific to healthcare, because I'm understanding also that
(23:18):
there is a bit of a pressure on the STEM
front too. Have you noticed European governments have heard I've
seen folks on TV talk about numbers. We've seen all that,
But in reality, have you actually started seeing some active
(23:38):
efforts to try and use this opportunity to bring back
some of the great brains that we had who left,
or attract some of the US brains here to feed
the future science that makes another company in ten years time.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, I'm sure that on the microscale that some of
this is happening. But I think even before as some
of these developments regarding the availability of research funding in
the US, based on, for instance, the Drugy report. In Europe,
I think some governments had already woken up, and I
mentioned the Netherlands, but also France. They pledged I think
(24:14):
some of ten billion two growing the biotech industry. They
want to position themselves becoming the Boston of Europe. I
think the UK a similar number they made public of
ten billion that they want to make available in various
ways also for their biotech industry. So I think across
Europe there's definitely an impetus to grow this industry because
(24:36):
I think we're very good at it in Europe. I
think the quality of European science, if you just measure
it by patent filings and publications, I think is really high.
But the capital scars, which I think for us on
a smaller scale again is interesting because valuations are about
forty percent lower in Europe as a result of the
(24:57):
scarcity of capital compared to the US. If you look
at the overall ecosystem, we could definitely do with more
capital of private as well as in terms of government
funding and research funding. So yes, we're seeing on a
macro scale, we're seeing that Europe is weighing in in
terms of specific examples of attracting leading researchers or research
(25:20):
groups or nana. Have you already seen something.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Concrete, I mean, I'd say that we definitely see. I
guess we tend to always be recruiting from a pretty
global talent pool. We definitely, you know, when we're recruiting
leaders into our companies, we tend to see people being
interested driven by really what's happening kind of what is
the science, what is the innovation? If the enthusiastic about it,
(25:46):
I'd say we definitely are seeing a strong interest from
people who are loocate in the US, whether or not
the American nationals or Europeans wanting to return back to Europe,
whether that's a recent thing on. I'm not sure that
we necessarily see such a big change. I think we
see and then sort of in the in the aftermath
(26:06):
of COVID, I think we I think everyone has been
benefiting from feeling that it's much more feasible to really
have a global talent pool for sort of highly specialized
functions and attracting the best people regardless of where they're based.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Right, So, I mean I have a little this is
this this podcast is about you. But one of the
things I worry about is that these pledges are easy
to make. I'd love to see France and UK and
all the other countries have pledged actually flow the money.
But I think we're in a world where the country's
European countries are being pushed to increase their defense spending.
(26:42):
They also have to think about AI, which I think
AI is super important for sovereignty and the national security,
and they don't want to keep taxing their people, so
it's a difficult area to find the money to put
into this. So let's hope that they also view by
tach and life science is an important element.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Of national security.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Let's see, right, let's move get a little bit of
micro here, and I'm going to ask you a question
which a lot of us often ask companies. You know,
tell us what your favorite two products are, but give
us a not you know, which have However, you want
to answer this, some of your exciting portfolio companies may
be based that on expected newsflow this year or something.
(27:26):
Because I'm sure you love all your companies, but you know,
let's let's just try that.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah, we absolutely love all our children. But I think
maybe one company I'd like to highlight is as far Us.
So I think this is actually a really nice example
of a drue European homegrown success story. So it's a
company that was founded on the basis of groundbreaking research
out of the University of Leiden, and it's been funded
(27:53):
and incubated really by Fobion and by our system fund
by Generation Ventures really from the outset and to a
point where they've generated now clinical data. The company works
in rare diseases, so in lysosomal storage diseases, and it's
developing brain penetrant therapies that can you know, for one
of the first opportunities to really treat some of the
(28:15):
CNS manifestations of some of these devastating diseases, which mainly
impact children and adolescents unfortunately, and I think you know,
it's been in the news quite recently because we're very
proud that we've just been able to raise one hundred
and thirty two million euros in a large financing round
that actually funds development of these products through to registration
(28:36):
hopefully in two different diseases, and plus test them out
in smaller groups of patients for some other diseases as well.
So I think, you know, coming back to where we
started about being kind of the innovation engine of our industry,
I think this is an example where actually in a
small private company is able to take these medicines really
from the academic laboratory where some of the science was done,
(29:00):
and through to now into a phase three study and
hopefully to be available to the benefit of patients in
the next couple of years. And Obviously the clinical development
is being done globally with clinical sites in Europe but
also in the US and in South America and investigators
all over the world sort of participating in this. So
(29:20):
that's definitely one that we're very excited about and very
proud to be one of the main investors of as well.
A second company I think is exciting is New Map Therapeutics.
So this is a company based in Switzerland developing multi
specific antibody based therapies and they were sort of in
the in the news, I guess last year when they
(29:40):
had a very big transaction with J and J where
they spun out a single product from their pipeline into
a separate company called Yellow Jersey Therapeutics that the G
ANDJ then acquired. And it's a real example of a
big sort of trend we're seeing across our industry of
combining multiple targets in a single molecule to sort of
(30:00):
break the efficacy sealing, particularly in inflammatory diseases and the
rest of the rest of Newmap, if you like. Without
the Yellow Jersey asset continues and it is a well
funded company, and also as an example of I think
the sort of the type of innovation where Europe is
really strong building on this sort of heritage of our
(30:21):
biologics based companies. You already mentioned argen X and gen
Map obviously sort of two of the next generation leaders
in this area, and I think new Map could really
grow into be one of the next next leaders in
the European biotech scene as well well.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
The example I was going to give of another company
that we were at the root of which is New
Amsterdam Pharma. And to your points, we're also definitely not
in the business of giving investment advice, so I will
just stick to whatever public information is known about this company.
Because the DESPEC they became a public company. But we
(30:55):
co founded the company together with one of our operating partners,
Professor John Cassela who in his academic days was one
of the thought leaders in cardiovascular metabolic diseases, and we
found this asset that we actually already knew from a
prior life at MGEN, which was a SETEP inhibitor being
deprioritized for strategic reasons at MGEN. We were able to
(31:18):
get it back and form a company around the asset. Then,
as it had already gone through Phase two, we prepared
for Phase three studies, which indeed typically twenty years ago
we couldn't have finance because for a private company to
embark on a phase three study in cardiovascular it takes
(31:38):
a long lot of capital. But at the end of
that development there could be a very big market of
all the people that cannot get to their target cholesterol levels,
which is the drug doing. And since then, I think
several positive trials have been published by the company, but
also very recently, and that's why I wanted to mention them.
(32:00):
It was also shown in a sort of a meta trial,
a subtrial within the larger trial focused on certain Alzheimer's
markers that also this drug seems to have a very
positive effect on a very important Alzheimer's marker, showing that
you know, lipids, especially toxic lipids, also play an important
role in disease progression of Alzheimer's. So we may see
(32:24):
here an approach that can target both cardiovascular as well
as a specific brain disease, all centered around the role
of lipids, different types of lipids in the body. So yeah,
that's another one we're very proud of and excited about.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It reminds me of one of these small companies in
Denmark called nov Nordisks developing GLP ones not only format
about it and obviously not the lipid targeting drug.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
But at the end of the day, if you lose
weight and you manage.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Your cardiovascular risk, and they're also being after Alzheimer's, it's
particular subset of Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
But interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So let's see that data reads out this year. So
now I'm convinced you guys have got the Mitus touch
and everything you touch turns to gold. But there might
have been one or two that didn't do you want it.
I don't want any examples of companies that didn't work out,
But I want to focus on when things go wrong,
what is it that drives that is there? And I'm
(33:25):
pretty sure that we all learned lessons from our mistakes.
It doesn't have to be a mistake. Drug development is
a risky process. Things just failed because the biological rationale
wasn't exactly right, or the molecule didn't turn out to
be exactly right, or what a plethoro other issues. But
if you wanted to just focus on that for a moment,
and how to give us some thought processes as to
(33:47):
what happened and how that focuses you further going forward,
and also in their interview, perhaps how much of it
is to do with perhaps founders having getting in the
way a little bit because that you know, it's not
the first time that would have happened. You know, they
have different aspirations and perhaps so just talk us through that, please.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
I mean, I think you highlighted the role of the team.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
I think we see the team as one of the
most important aspects.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
I think you know, I think we all know how
incredibly complex drug development is as a process. So having
the right team around an innovation to take it from
the laboratory or from the academic founders, if that's the case,
and into first pre clinical and subsequently clinical development. I
(34:40):
think it's important to appreciate that every single stage in
the sort of journey of a discovery or scientific discovery
to actually eventually becoming a medicine, every single stage really
is its own highly specialized process that requires leadership with
that particular particular set of expertise around it in order
(35:01):
to make the right choices in order to not walk
into blind spots. And I think that's one of the
reasons why I think Forbrin has invested really heavily in
having operating partners and venture partners that have deep expertise
in different both stages of drug development and in different
therapeutic areas, so that we can as much as possible
(35:21):
help our small companies or sort of emerging companies take
the right decisions and tap into the right networks and
get the right support along along that journey and hopefully
minimize the risk for four of us as a as
a as a joint team with them to make some
of those mistakes.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And maybe to add to that, so I would say,
you know, for a small biotech to take too many shortcuts,
I think that is what we have seen to cause failure,
for instance, clinical trials being too small, or trying to
cram too many different endpoints into a single trial, or
(35:59):
going for for the market opportunity that was the biggest
but maybe also one of the riskier And so I
think what we have learned from that is, as we
mentioned before, it's very important to properly resource companies, both
in terms of the team as none as said, but
also in terms of the setup of clinical trials and
(36:22):
to really incorporate into those trials concrete feedback from pharma
as to what it is that they would like to
see at the end of the trial, and not just
in terms of the clinical outcome, but also any blood markers,
any stratification, anything that they would like to see, so
that it's not the case that you think you have
a positive trial and then you do your BD and
(36:45):
you have your discussions with pharma and then they said, oh,
had you only done this or that, And of course
at that point in time, you cannot do that anymore.
So it's a long winded answer, but I think we
really try to do things to the standards of pharma,
which means that trials are more elaborate but also more expensive,
(37:07):
and I think with our larger funds and with the
concentrated transatlantic syndicates that we forge, I think we can
really accomplish this. And there, of course, the teams are
super important because you don't want to entrust a rookie
team with LI like for instance, with Verdiva, we structured
at four hundred and eleven million Series A rounds to
(37:27):
execute on several clinical studies in parallel, and you really
want a very experienced team there.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah. Yeah, Unfortunately, I'm going to pick on both of
those as one of the reasons we get failures in
Europe because we don't have enough money. When you don't
have enough money, you can't attract the perhaps the right talent,
and even if the talents, then they can't execute on
their plan, so they have to cut corners and then
(37:54):
we beat them up because they didn't manage to get there,
which is which is a very sad situation to.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Be in in the U Y.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I'm sure it happens, but there's so many companies that
you kind of they're going to get lost in the
in the noise.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
So great, let's let's let's talk about exits, IPOs, et cetera.
I heard, I heard.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
I think that your main strategy is to build companies
to be sold. If there's an IPO window that's open,
if a company is sellable, then to me, that suggests
it's also ipoable if you.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
Want to go down that road. But what does the
current deal window look like you can take? But I
mean IPOs we know.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Are pretty much closed. Maybe the window now closed, But
how do you feel about the M and a window?
And we see them steals every JP Morgan investors wake
up every morning waiting for an announcement of a deal.
And we've recently had some decent deals, right, we just
had a good, nice licensing deal between Bristol Myers and
(38:53):
and BioNTech. And we've had some couple of biggish MNA
deals five billion dollars ten billion dollar takeouts, so son
of and then at the beginning of the year we
had Johnson and Johnson and inter Celler Therapeutics. So just
took us through what your perception is from obviously your companies,
and how much do you feel that M and A
(39:13):
market is alive and kicking, and and if there has
been just talk to me about this is if there
has been a little bit of a slowdown, maybe because
of the uncertainties of tariffs and most favored nations. It
just makes you sit back and thinking, Okay, look, I
can take an extra month before I do this.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Talk me through all.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
That to start with a letter. I think, yes, it's true.
I think farm I have been sort of assuming for
a couple of months await and see attitude with respect
to the things that you mentioned, but also, for instance,
you know what's going to be the new policy is
coming from the FDA, et cetera. So I think by
now things are are gradually shaking out, and therefore, across
(39:55):
our portfolio we're seeing discussions around potential m and A
pick up, so I think that is good. But again
touching on the things we discussed before, with the public
markets being relatively shut down and late stage private capital
being relatively scarce, I think some pharmas are trying to
(40:18):
do some bottom fishing. It's logical they think they can
buy some interesting assets at low prices. So that's why again,
I think it's very important to properly resource the company
so that they don't have to entertain any bids that
don't do justice to the value of the asset to
both investors and patients. So I think I would distinguish
(40:41):
between sort of nice to have assets for pharma, but
also they must have assets, and there I think we
still see a lot of competition and then paying full prices.
But for more nice to have assets, I think they're
currently to some extent bottom fishing.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Yeah, I think the need for fun to acquire products
has not gone away, right, I mean, I think despite
whatever has been happening politically and in terms of you know, IPO,
market capital availability, et cetera. I mean I think those
things do obviously have a huge impact on our sector
because they impact the number of options that any biotech
(41:19):
CEO feels that he or she has in front of
them for refinancing the companies. But I think if you're
looking at it from Farmer's perspective, clearly the sort of
the you know, the patent cliff, the loss of revenue
from loss of exclusivity, even in the quite near term
timeframe from twenty five to twenty thirty, that has not
gone awigh, that that fundamental problem persists, and I think
(41:42):
the only way to address that is to acquire innovation
and acquire products. I think given the somewhat more restrictive
stance from competition authorities recently obviously Farmer has been much
more interested in doing these somewhat smaller deals, sort of
acquiring individual products, rather than doing larger mergers with commercial
stage companies. But I think again that that sort of placed,
(42:05):
you know, perfectly into the business model that that we
had Fobien are sort of invested in of investing in
private either pre clinical or clinical stage companies that then
at a at a certain point in clinical development, we
can we can hand off to Farmer and they will,
you know, take those those products over the finish line
(42:25):
to registration.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Okay, so I heard that the M and A market
is at least warming up, or is getting a little
bit hotter, or don't.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Know, whatever phrase you want to use.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
What is the hottest area in terms of is it immunology,
is it oncology, is it neuro is it cardiovascular?
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Is it all of the above.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Do you have something that you go, we really need
to spend quite a lot more in this space, because
that's the I always ask this of heads of R
and DS that I speak to, What is what is
the obesity? What is the next obesity thing? You know,
We've had all these waves of college you drive, checkpoint inhibitors,
we had t andfs, we had statins and tacids. There's
(43:04):
always some wave coming up. What do you think is
going to be the next one?
Speaker 4 (43:09):
I'd say, I think that in the most recent big
big wave or big focus area I think that we've
seen has really been in the inflammatory disease or commune
disease area. And I think a big part of the
explanation that has been because of this. I think we
talked about earlier, for example, with the yellow Jersey acquisition
of combining different modalities in a single molecule and getting
(43:30):
significantly better efficacy. Also, there's been a lot of innovation
from biotech companies in making more long lasting so that
you can reduce the administration frequency, in particular in areas
like a topic dermatitis. If if kids can have an
injectable that they only have to take once every three
months or every six months, that's obviously far better than
(43:51):
something you have to take every week or every two weeks.
So I think that's been a really that's been a
really big area also across a lot of different farmer companies,
And I think part of the reason is that a
lot of these indication areas can actually become quite large markets,
and you can have the potential to develop some of
these drugs across multiple different disease areas as well, so
you can have a little bit of a you know,
(44:12):
a pipeline in a in a single product, whereas oncology
has clearly been somewhat more out of favor, notwithstanding what
we've recently seen with the veggief and and PDO one
deal making frenzy, which has been I'm.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Sure you're working on a PD one VEGF combo company.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
We've been we've been very we've been looking at a
lot of things in UH in this area. But yeah,
I think it's very hard to predict what's what's really
going to be UH, what's really going to be the
sort of the winning configuration if any from from from
this area.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Let me turn that on its head. If you don't
mind what area? Don't you want people to come and
pitch to antibiotics anti effectives? And now I know, Nana
in your one of the companies that you were involved
with before was revived. I don't know, Sandra, if you
guys were involved to and I know that team from
the Aerotherapeutics days and I was a happy shareholder of
(45:08):
ReViral from early days. So then that was a good
outcome in the end. Maybe it did or didn't work out,
I don't know. But what don't you want to see?
What is it that you go, Oh, that's no, let's
not look at that. That's just not even just even
the title of the of the pitch.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Is not right.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, I'm not sure there's many things that we completely
reject outright. I would say the bar for cell therapy
based products is pretty high. I think there's also an
area that we've seen a lot of farmer kind of
take a step back from even if they were engaged,
because it's just become it has turned out to be
very difficult to scale up these products. I think, on
(45:46):
the other hand, you know, taking the view of you know,
as a as a patient, as a citizen, as a taxpayer,
I think it's also it's encouraging to see that Legend
is now really making the success of their cell based
product and obviously showing william assive remission rates for patients.
That's great news. I think the approach that we've taken
is we're very enthusiastic about the sort of in vivo
(46:08):
carti approach, sort of of doing this, you know, taking
this to the next iteration, if you like, of developed
developing the benefits of carti products, but delivered as an
in vivo product instead of having as a cell based product.
And we're happy to be investors in Kapstan Therapeutics, which
is just announced today in fact that they've started their
(46:28):
human trials. And then I'd say another area that has
been a little bit out of favor, but where I
think we remain bullish is actually on gene therapy in
particular for rare diseases. It's also been something that both
in the public markets and from farmer you know, a
lot of a lot of farmers have actually divested their
gene therapy portfolios, and obviously a lot of the public
(46:49):
market investors also seem to be very negative on this.
I think we remain very optimistic about the potential for
really transformational benefits of gene therapy in a lot of
rare diseases. Forbien was one of the founding investors in
Unicure as well, and obviously they now have a product
on the market that's making a real difference to patient.
(47:10):
So I think that's where that's kind of where we
are happy to go against the current.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
I mean, honestly, five years ago somebody had come and
pitched an obesities idea, you would have gone no. If
we've been there, we've seen it. It's not easy, it's
a difficult market. And then of course now everybody wants
to be an obesity of some shape or form ameline
or GLP one or three g's, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
So right, let's finish up here, and.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
I want to ask you just a couple of AI
questions how much is AI beginning to feature in your
own business, not in your companies that you're investing in,
or how AI is going to help drug development?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
How is it? Is it slowly feature?
Speaker 1 (47:48):
Is it becoming more and more parts of the consciousness
of the company.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yes, I would say so, but we're not front runners definitely.
But as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, with the
numbers of deals we're seeing now fifteen hundred plus on
an annual basis, I think to quickly reduce that number
to a more palatable number where you can really dive
(48:14):
deep into the science. I think that is part of
what keeps us busy and there I think AI can
play an important role to support the analyst in weading
to the deal flow, but also to proactively source deal
flow by connecting the dots on a publicly available data
from publications, from databases, with clinical data points, et cetera,
(48:41):
to come up with ideas and also with concrete deal
flow items. Although from our own account, we keep telling
you of what percentage of for instance, the deal flow
in Europe of the deals that get funded we get
to see, and it's very close to one hundred percent,
So I think there are no deals that we're currently missing,
but I think we can use AI better to also
(49:01):
find the opportunities where we can build companies around those ideas.
For instance, right, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
We don't endorse any products here or anything like that,
but I did see a paper recently by deep Mind
called the Google Coscientist Now that, at least to my
simple mind, sounded fascinating. And you know you're going to say, okay,
go go and make my hypothesis in well, in fact
that I think one of the tests of it was
in motorneuron disease. So look, I mean I could keep
(49:32):
talking to you guys for hours, but I think our
time is up. I really appreciate your candor, your openness
and your time. I think you've given me three or
four other podcast ideas. So I'm going to come back
to and ask you to get some of your companies
on because it sounds like there's some very interesting ideas
(49:54):
that have been tested that I would love to talk
about and bring to our audience. So Nana Sander, thank
you very much for your time. And I really appreciate
the all the knowledge that you and I appreciate what
you do because it's you know it's important for you know,
I am a European, and I'm and I'm very proud
of it, and and and I love science, so I
(50:17):
hope that we can. We can I can be watching
these companies come out of science translated to beautiful therapies
and important therapies for for patients.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Thank you well, thank you very much. Sam. It was
a pleasure.
Speaker 6 (50:29):
Thank you very much. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
H
Host
Jonathan Palmer
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