Alex Ar­faei trades his an­a­lyst's post for a new role as biotech VC; Sanofi vet heads to Vi­for

Too of­ten, Alex Ar­faei ar­rived too late. 

An an­a­lyst at BMO Cap­i­tal Mar­kets, he’d meet with biotech or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal heads for their IPO or sec­ondary fund­ing and his brain, trained on a bi­ol­o­gy de­gree and six years at Mer­ck and En­do, would spring with ques­tions: Why this bio­mark­er? Why this de­sign? Why not this end­point? Not that he could do any­thing about it. These ex­ecs were com­ing for clin­i­cal mon­ey; their de­ci­sions had been made and fi­nal­ized long ago.

“There were so many times where I would be puz­zled at the course of de­vel­op­ment,” Ar­faei told End­points News. “More re­cent­ly what a lot of com­pa­nies would do is seek out my guid­ance and pri­or­i­tize their projects ac­cord­ing­ly. 

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