After all the deals are done….
"Biotech executives make connections" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff, January 18, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — The mating call at this week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference was actually a phrase — “meet you under the clock,” referring to the large hanging timepiece in the elegant lobby of the Westin St. Francis Hotel.
It was a constant gathering place at the only annual conference that brings together every biotech industry kingpin and dealmaker for four days. But once the sun set, a rendezvous under the clock became merely a jumping off point to a potpourri of private receptions. They included wine tastings and corporate parties at hotels, art galleries, and other venues across the city for the thousands of bigwigs who attend the conference every year.
At those after-hours events, it was easy to spot Boston-area medical technology chieftains arriving in chauffeured limousines. You could hear lawyers and bankers talking in hushed tones about preparing S-1’s — the documents that launch initial public offerings. And you could see young guns from venture-backed startups sipping Napa Valley pinot noir as they listened to more seasoned executives from big pharma grouse about the regulators who approve their medicines and devices.
That's odd, because the post below this (that I linked at the end of this post) said relations with regulators are great.
For many, the round of evening gatherings was simply an extension of the nonstop networking at the heart of this week’s conference, which drew more than 8,500 biotech and health care executives….
Inside the Old US Mint building, a columned Greek Revival structure, for an invitation-only reception hosted by the drug giants AstraZeneca and MedImmune, hundreds of biopharma bon vivants milled in a courtyard to drink cabernet and munch on short rib and kimchi tacos.
Related:
"The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest. The announcement appears to be a first for a major drug company — although others may be considering similar moves — and comes at a particularly sensitive time for Glaxo. It is the subject of a bribery investigation in China, where authorities contend the company funneled illegal payments to doctors and government officials in an effort to boost drug sales."
All in the name of your health.
Also see: Choking Down a Pill of a Chinese Po$t
Elsewhere, the life sciences elite sipped Scotch at the BioCentury Distillery Reception in the Marriott, sampled the best of northern California wineries at the Feinstein Kean reception at the HangArt Gallery, and threw back beers and cocktails at the Pure Communications party in the basement of Slide’s, a Prohibition-era speakeasy where cases of bootleg whiskey were once delivered down a playground slide behind a secret wall.
I hope they can hold their liquor better than Campatelli.
At the bar at Blu, which shares space with a fitness club, a motley crew of journalists, day traders, and public relations practitioners from Edelman, the firm that played host, gathered for the “unofficial 2014 JPMorgan Conference Tweetup,” though no one was tweeting.
Waiters sashayed through the dense crowd in the basement of Morton’s, holding aloft trays of grilled steak hors d’oeuvres, courtesy of the Boston law firm Foley Hoag and the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. While some of the loudest voices had Boston accents, they were joined by colleagues and guests from across the country.
I'm all for a great party, folks; however, when the elite are ricking it up while the rest of us starve and suffer, well…. time to eat the rich.
“More fun stuff happens outside the conference, at least for me,” said Rajiv Mahadevan, chief executive of Applied Immunology Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif., company developing drugs and diagnostics. “I was at the bar upstairs and it was packed. I saw a guy who looked familiar and said, ‘Didn’t you hire me for the job I had four or five years ago?’ ”
“It’s a small network, when you get down to it,” said his associate Kerry Mahon, who said he just moved from Cambridge to Silicon Valley to take a job as the company’s business development director. “You know everyone’s going to be here in San Francisco this week, and so much of the conference takes place outside the conference.”
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Wellesley communications executive Doug MacDougall was just getting his second wind after rising before dawn to host a run up Telegraph Hill by about 40 biomedical executives, including many from Massachusetts. “It gets bigger every year,” he said of the J.P. Morgan fun run. “If it gets any bigger, we may have to get a permit.”
Near the bar, a group of executives from Lexington’s Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. talked about the irony of how many of the business development sessions they attended were with representatives of other Massachusetts companies.
See: Cubist sees 2014 as pivotal in fight against ‘superbugs’
“I’m meeting with people and they say, ‘We’re from Massachusetts, too,’ ” said Steve Gilman, the Cubist chief scientific officer. “But it’s just easier to do it out here.”
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You might need that drink later:
"Risk of failure leads biotech firms to seek new strategies" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff, January 18, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — For all the success the biotechnology industry enjoyed in 2013 — including record-breaking share gains — company leaders and investors who attended this week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference were frequently reminded of a blunt reality: Making life-extending drugs is a high-risk enterprise.
Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s experience underscores what is sometimes underplayed in the heady world of biotechnology: If you want to pursue big wins by developing cutting-edge drugs, you have to accept the chance of spectacular failures….
See: The Biotech Fizzle
Massachusetts drug makers — while increasingly the drivers of innovation — have not been exempt from these reversals of fortune.
Food and Drug Administration officials rebuffed Genzyme’s application for approval of a much-anticipated multiple sclerosis therapy already on the market in Europe and Canada, faulting the design of the Cambridge company’s clinical trials. Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. disclosed that sales of its pioneering hepatitis C drug were falling faster than anticipated, prompting the company to shed 15 percent of its workforce on the eve of moving to a gleaming new headquarters and research center on the South Boston Waterfront.
See: Genzyme Gets Death Sentence From FDA
Executives at Aveo Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Cambridge company that appeared on the verge of launching an important new kidney cancer drug at last year’s J.P. Morgan conference, didn’t even show up this year. The FDA turned thumbs down on the drug, also citing safety risks and clinical trial problems. The deflated biotech had to scrap the program and eliminate nearly two-thirds of its staff.
With the share prices of 81 biotechnology companies more than doubling last year, Aveo was among the worst performing publicly traded biotechnology stocks, losing 77.3 percent of its value, according to data compiled by Burrill & Co., a San Francisco health care financial firm. Other big losers included Affymax Inc. of Cupertino, Calif., which dropped 95.9 percent of its value in 2013; Bio Lab Naturals of Tampa, down 97 percent; and Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc. of East Brunswick Township, N.J., which lost 98.4 percent.
The risks — of FDA rejections, the loss of revenue to competing drugs, the refusal of health insurers to pay for new drugs and devices — have forced companies and investors to proceed more cautiously and devise new business strategies….
Managing risk is important in timing, in how money is spent, and in deciding how much funding to extend to how many startups — as well as how many co-investors to bring in to share the risk. As some venture capital firms have exited the life sciences arena, wary of regulators and the long road from drug discovery to approval and sales, those that remain increasingly look to take their chances with big pharmaceutical companies and seek to align themselves with corporate “strategic investors” as potential partners.
Michael Ringel, a partner and managing director at Boston Consulting Group who advises health care businesses, said the fear of a costly setback can make drug companies — particularly smaller ones relying on a single product — more risk averse than their financial backers, who can hedge their bets by investing in multiple startups….
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Where is the patient in all of thi$?
Related: J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Helps Lay Biotech Pipeline
Also see: I Missed the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
Boston's Biotech Conference
I think I would skip the one in Boston if I were you.
