Session 3-B: Bridging Academia and Industry: Fueling Biotech Innovation

Click on their image to learn more about each speaker

Michael Kalos, PhD

Managing Director, Next Pillar Consulting | Senior Venture Partner, Orange Grove Bio | CEO, IpiNovyx Bio

Stephanie Wisner, MBA

Co-founder at Centivax | Forbes 30 Under 30 | Author of Building Backwards to Biotech

Sophia Su, MBBS, MS

Investment Director, Junson Capital

Moderator: Heather A. Steinman, PhD, MBA

SVP, Business Development & Executive Director, Technology Transfer at The Wistar Institute

Check back for more speakers!

Pre-panel Q&A

Question: What are the key challenges in fostering partnerships between academic institutions and biotech companies, and how can both sides overcome these to drive innovation?

Answers: “Successful academic institutions fundamentally have different goals, motivations, and definitions of ‘success’ than a successful business. That is not a bad thing. However, typically the difficulty when bridging academic technologies and professors into a business occurs because academic approaches are attempted to be applied in a business setting. This can be overcome with business training and building understanding for scientific founders, as well as helping business people understand the training typical to academic science.” — Stephanie Wisner, MBA

“The bullets I would develop and could speak to [at the session] would be:

  • Challenges and difficulty negotiating licensing terms:  Unreasonable expectations, focus on proximal gains, inter-institutional variability in ask and experience

  • Forming a productive partnership with founder PI to transition process from discovery of “cool" science to building a focused company to deliver medicines” — Michael Kalos, Ph.D.

“My view on the key challenges through past investment experiences are:

  • Mindset Discrepancy: There exists a mindset discrepancy between scientific research and commercialization world. While research focuses on innovation and novelty, the market values products that generate profit. Bridging the considerable divide between advanced technology and a successful product requires those in academia to adjust their expectations accordingly.

  • Identifying the Right Application: Aligning scientific research technology with real-world unmet medical needs is crucial for looking for effective application.

  • Intellectual Property: Ensuring clarity and distinction between IP terms licensed from academic sources and those developed internally is essential.

  • The role of PI: A clear cut of the responsibility and participation of professors from academia to industry is also crucial.” — Sophia Su, MBBS, MS