I'll be in Lon­don next week with the End­points crew and a great line­up of biotech ex­perts and in­sid­ers. Join us

Well over a decade ago, I was look­ing over my read­er­ship num­bers and de­cid­ed I need­ed to fig­ure out why we had such a loy­al group of biotech sub­scribers in the UK for the pub I was ed­i­tor of at the time. Well be­fore I launched End­points News, I knew that the UK and Eu­rope as a whole would play a ma­jor role in any glob­al biotech pub­li­ca­tion.

But I just wasn’t quite sure how it all worked.

We start­ed End­points with Eu­rope and Lon­don in mind, and we’ve dou­bled down in the last cou­ple of years as the Fi­nan­cial Times stepped in as the new ma­jor­i­ty own­er. We re­cruit­ed a UK-based team to sharp­en our fo­cus and con­tin­ued to pay close at­ten­tion to the sci­ence and the star­tups that are in­flu­enc­ing the in­dus­try to­day.

Part of that com­mit­ment has fo­cused on an an­nu­al in­dus­try sum­mit in Lon­don I in­sist­ed on from the be­gin­ning at End­points, and we’re back live at the FT’s head­quar­ters at Brack­en House on Oc­to­ber 11. We’ll be stream­ing the live event — as well as a full set of vir­tu­al pan­els and fire­sides on Oc­to­ber 12.

The sci­ence of drug dis­cov­ery may have the same ba­sic roots glob­al­ly, but the peo­ple and com­pa­nies who op­er­ate in Eu­rope face their own unique chal­lenges, from gain­ing the at­ten­tion of the ma­jor play­ers in the US to rais­ing cap­i­tal and trig­ger­ing an IPO in a con­strained en­vi­ron­ment to find­ing the ex­act right tal­ent to lead the com­pa­ny for­ward. It is a les­son in ac­cept­ing chal­lenges and beat­ing them. And it de­serves a spe­cial sum­mit for the in­dus­try to gath­er and net­work with.

I won’t go over all the dif­fer­ent ex­perts who will be on hand at this event. And don’t over­look the cock­tail hour at the end — it’s al­ways a high­light for me. Please con­sid­er mak­ing your reser­va­tion to­day, and to get things start­ed, I’ll pro­vide a £50 dis­count on the first 20 of you who take me up on it (use the “First20” code for the dis­count). We’ll have the UK team on hand — in­clud­ing Lon­don-based news ed­i­tor Rey­nald Cas­tañeda — for you to meet as well.

I’m still learn­ing about the in­dus­try in the UK and Eu­rope. You nev­er get all the way to the bot­tom of a top­ic that broad and ever-chang­ing. But I al­ways feel bet­ter in­formed — bet­ter equipped — when I do the sum­mit. I think you will, too.

And if you can’t be in Lon­don, be sure to sign up for the livestream­ing we’re pro­vid­ing to our read­ers glob­al­ly. I hope to see you there.