Biotech ex­ecs over­all are in a good mood these days.

Yes, the pub­lic mar­kets aren’t near­ly as wide open as they were a year ago. Not every­one finds it easy to tap ven­ture in­vestors for more cash on the pre-IPO side of the busi­ness. And there’s a dis­tinct un­der­tow of con­cern with clear notes of anx­i­ety that the fi­nanc­ing trend is tip­ping to­ward tougher times ahead.

But most are still con­fi­dent in their own abil­i­ty to raise more mon­ey in a cash-hun­gry busi­ness, they’re def­i­nite­ly in hir­ing mode, large­ly find­ing ex­cel­lent can­di­dates for the work — though per­haps work­ing hard­er than ever to make sure of that — and more up­beat than ever re­gard­ing reg­u­la­tors’ abil­i­ty to judge their da­ta; all while look­ing for­ward to what comes next.

In the show­down be­tween Hillary Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump, it’s Clin­ton in a land­slide. (And that was the opin­ion be­fore Grope­gate sur­faced.) The pro-HRC camp, though, is dom­i­nat­ed by the grudg­ing sense that she rep­re­sents the less­er of two evils, with no good can­di­dates to pick from. A large mi­nor­i­ty see no re­al dif­fer­ence be­tween the two.

That, in a nut­shell, is what we found in End­points News’ first quar­ter­ly con­fi­dence sur­vey of the glob­al biotech in­dus­try.

But what I found even more in­ter­est­ing than the hard num­bers from this sur­vey are the thoughts they shared on deal­mak­ing, biotech val­u­a­tions, hir­ing and more. As a group, this ex­ec­u­tive crowd has been do­ing a lot of think­ing about the state of af­fairs in biotech. And I’m hap­py to share many of their thoughts in the analy­sis of the num­bers be­low.

Al­to­geth­er 105 biotech ex­ecs agreed to take our sur­vey and 96 fin­ished the work. (Many of you might view that as N=96.) The group was large­ly made up of biotech CEOs, with the rest a med­ley of C-suite ex­ecs and VCs on a va­ri­ety of biotech boards from both sides of the At­lantic.

Most were based in the US, with heavy con­cen­tra­tions in Cam­bridge/Boston and Cal­i­for­nia, large­ly in the Bay Area. About a quar­ter of the par­tic­i­pants were in Eu­rope, weight­ed to­ward Lon­don and the Gold­en Tri­an­gle. I specif­i­cal­ly sought out ex­ec­u­tives in the three big hubs: Boston, San Fran­cis­co and Lon­don. But a num­ber of oth­er ex­ec­u­tives were scat­tered from coast-to-coast in the US and north to south in Eu­rope.

The re­sults are pre­sent­ed in the ag­gre­gate.

The in­di­vid­ual re­spons­es are con­fi­den­tial, but they al­so had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make com­ments on the record or not for at­tri­bu­tion. And many of­fered some keen in­sights on some of the most im­por­tant is­sues fac­ing the in­dus­try.

You’ll read di­rect quotes from our End­points 100 ex­ec­u­tives and have ac­cess to 15 in­ter­ac­tive charts. And learn:

• Has the pric­ing de­bate in the US had any im­pact on biotech de­vel­op­ment plans?
• How do biotech ex­ec­u­tives feel about their ac­cess to cap­i­tal?
• How do they rate the pub­lic and pri­vate cap­i­tal mar­kets?
• How do they rate biotech as­set val­u­a­tions — both li­cens­ing and M&A?
• Are they hir­ing? What are their thoughts on the tal­ent pool avail­able to them?
• How much do they out­source?
• Who do they sup­port: Hillary Clin­ton, or Don­ald Trump?

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Ac­cess to cap­i­tal

A large­ly sun­ny view on cap­i­tal

Ful­ly half of these ex­ec­u­tives said they were ei­ther ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent (14%) or very con­fi­dent (36%) in their abil­i­ty to ac­cess cap­i­tal for their com­pa­nies. An­oth­er 30% said they were sim­ply con­fi­dent. No one lacked con­fi­dence, though one in 5 were on­ly some­what con­fi­dent on this score.

That large­ly sun­ny mood comes de­spite a dis­tinct shift in the mood about the pub­lic mar­kets. A year af­ter the IPO mar­ket be­gan to slow down from a three-year fes­ti­val of new of­fer­ings, 42% of our sam­pling say that the mar­ket for IPOs and fol­low-on of­fer­ings is fair, 30% said av­er­age and 16% checked off poor. On­ly 11 picked good and there was one ex­cel­lent.

Look­ing back a year, 42% would have ranked the fall of 2015 as good, with an­oth­er 39% say­ing av­er­age, 10% fair and 6% poor. Three re­mem­ber it as an ex­cel­lent time.

But once you turn to the pri­vate as­sess­ments of the mar­ket, the mood sounds even more grim, de­pend­ing on how their com­pa­ny lines up with what’s con­sid­ered hot and hap­pen­ing.

“Strong, well led com­pa­nies work­ing on tech­nolo­gies that are in vogue and / or with key lat­er phase clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment mile­stones are now at­tract­ing cap­i­tal,” said one of our ex­ecs, echo­ing a feel­ing that is re­flect­ed in a long stream of com­ments on this top­ic. “Life is tough for those that do not fall in­to ex­cit­ing, new, trendy or lat­er phase.”

Sev­er­al ex­ecs said that it seemed that in­creas­ing­ly it was the biotechs with the trendi­est tech­nolo­gies – like gene edit­ing – that did the best these days.

Strong com­pa­nies that need to bor­row cash can do so eas­i­ly these days.

“For prof­itable/rev­enue gen­er­at­ing com­pa­nies bor­row­ing costs re­main at his­toric lows. This is strate­gic cap­i­tal.”

“Cap­i­tal is there but more picky. A year ago it was bet­ter and much bet­ter two years ago.”

To the ex­tent you can re­duce risk, though, mon­ey is eas­i­er to land. “Cap­i­tal is giv­en if most of the risk is gone,” says Prab­ha­vathi Fer­nan­des, who found­ed Cem­pra a decade ago.

---

Hir­ing

Hir­ing? In a word, yes

There’s no con­fus­ing this sig­nal. What­ev­er nag­ging con­cerns ex­ecs may have on fi­nanc­ing, these biotechs are large­ly grow­ing staffs.

Eighty-six per­cent of the re­spon­dents say they’re hir­ing more em­ploy­ees in the fourth quar­ter, with vir­tu­al­ly the same num­ber say­ing the same thing about 2017. On­ly 14% of the group said that they had no plans to hire, with 7% not­ing that they don’t know what’s in store for next year.

Nine in 10 said that the qual­i­ty of job can­di­dates they’re see­ing for open po­si­tions is good or ex­cel­lent. And ba­si­cal­ly 4 out of 5 felt they had a good pool of can­di­dates to pick from. One out of 5, though, said that wasn’t the case.

Sift­ing through all the com­ments, though, and I found that every­thing isn’t as op­ti­mistic as it may look at first blush. In the long line­up of re­spons­es:

“It has been chal­leng­ing to re­cruit per­son­nel with lat­er-stage ex­pe­ri­ence in the San Diego area. As a re­sult, we have built a de­vel­op­ment or­ga­ni­za­tion based in Cam­bridge, MA to ac­cess tal­ent.”

That’s mak­ing it tougher on the na­tive biotechs in the field.

“Boston/Cam­bridge/Waltham area is ad­van­taged by a large pool of tal­ent but com­pe­ti­tion is fierce as is cost of liv­ing and re­lo­ca­tion ex­pense.”

Oth­ers are look­ing to big biotech to pro­vide a steady flow of new re­cruits.

“In SF, very tight mar­ket. Hard­er to ac­cess the waves of east coast R&D cuts. And for many G&A po­si­tions, in­tense com­pe­ti­tion from tech sec­tor. Good news is more folks loose in the sock­et at Big Biotech — Genen­tech, Gilead — folks can be picked off much eas­i­er than in years past.”

These days, HR is as much about keep­ing good em­ploy­ees as re­cruit­ing new ones.

“Strik­ing war for tal­ent in Cam­bridge, MA and sur­round­ing re­gion. Re­tain­ing key em­ploy­ees is a sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic im­per­a­tive giv­en the choic­es they have to find al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment.”

And watch out for Big Phar­ma gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.

“As a Cam­bridge-based biotech, the most ob­vi­ous ben­e­fit (by far) of hav­ing many large phar­mas move in­to the area is ac­cess­ing tal­ent from such com­pa­nies. Of course, the down­side is that those same com­pa­nies are con­tin­u­ing to push biotech out of Kendall Square from a re­al es­tate per­spec­tive. A com­ment I heard re­cent­ly was that ‘there will be no biotech in Cam­bridge with­in five years.’ De­press­ing.”

Here’s some ad­vice to re­mem­ber:

“Ex­ploit­ing pre-ex­ist­ing net­works to get the right staff with the right ex­pe­ri­ence is key.”

We al­so have a com­plete­ly le­git help-want­ed no­tice to post from Pe­ter Hecht, the CEO at Iron­wood: “We are launch­ing our sec­ond prod­uct, Zu­rampic, and dou­bling the size of our sales force to sup­port both Zu­rampic and Linzess. We al­so have a grow­ing R&D pipeline with mul­ti­ple near term cat­a­lysts, and we are hir­ing to sup­port ex­pand­ing de­vel­op­ment ca­pac­i­ty needs. We are get­ting FAB­U­LOUS tal­ent.”

Tell them you heard about it here.

---

Val­u­a­tions

Deal num­bers are high, but…

True, 42% of the group say that the val­u­a­tions they’re see­ing in li­cens­ing deals look high, but an even larg­er 51% char­ac­ter­ize the same val­u­a­tions as no bet­ter than av­er­age. When you change the sub­ject to M&A, there’s more of a tilt to high: 49% see­ing the prices zoom high, 39% av­er­age.

But there’s an un­der­ly­ing prob­lem. The deal num­bers they’re see­ing are high, but many say the num­ber of deals is low.

“Deal ac­tive com­pa­nies are will­ing to pay more for less,” says one, a thought that was re­peat­ed by sev­er­al of the ex­ecs that of­fered an opin­ion on this.

“To­bi­ra is the key out­lier,” says an­oth­er, “but deals such as Medi­va­tion even in­di­cate when M&A oc­curs it tends to tip high.”

But then, there aren’t a big num­ber of com­pa­nies snap­ping up biotechs like Al­ler­gan. I’ve been see­ing a lot more sto­ries about com­pa­nies that are sup­posed to be buy­ing some­thing big — Bio­gen, Gilead, Sanofi and so on — than ac­tu­al bids. That hasn’t es­caped sev­er­al mem­bers of this group. And some are feel­ing some frus­tra­tion by the lack of ac­tion.

“This is a tough one: there have cer­tain­ly been a few eye pop­ping deals with shock­ing num­bers that make you won­der what’s go­ing on. But be­hind those, there are many many oth­er deals that are not get­ting done at all, and com­pa­nies with po­ten­tial­ly in­ter­est­ing as­sets that can’t find part­ners.”

“Tremen­dous scarci­ty val­ue of rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing com­pa­nies with in­creas­ing­ly de-risked pipelines. Sur­pris­ing to see how many big phar­ma com­pa­nies bid on Medi­va­tion.”

“Phar­ma is a bank and they are pay­ing very high pre­mi­ums when they ac­tu­al­ly open their check books. The prob­lem is in­er­tia and not enough deals.”

“It seems to be a ‘sell­ers’ mar­ket when deals get done, but not a lot of deals are get­ting done. Large phar­ma is still sit­ting on the side­lines and/or do­ing deals with one an­oth­er.”

Give it some time, though, and that may change.

“With the new tax in­ver­sion po­si­tion by the Trea­sury, we will see many more M&A of big Phar­ma de­ploy­ing their cash to buy biotech com­pa­nies. Pfiz­er and Al­ler­gan al­ready buy­ing lots of com­pa­nies,” not­ed Stephane Ban­cel, the CEO of Mod­er­na.

“There is a clear uptick in ac­tiv­i­ty and in­ter­est from larg­er com­pa­nies,” said an­oth­er. “While I don’t think this has trans­lat­ed in­to as many deals as I would have ex­pect­ed, I sus­pect there will be an uptick as we move in­to 2017. Con­di­tions seem ex­cel­lent.”

---

The reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment

Thumbs up for the FDA

Both the FDA and the EMA come out with sol­id marks for their will­ing­ness to ap­prove new drugs — but you can see a dis­tinct­ly big­ger vote of con­fi­dence for the FDA.

Eighty-two per­cent of our group said the FDA scored as good or ex­cel­lent in terms of their re­cep­tiv­i­ty to new drug ap­pli­ca­tions. But that score drops to 57% for the EMA, with a large mi­nor­i­ty — 36% — rat­ing the Eu­ro­pean agency as av­er­age.

I al­so asked if reg­u­la­to­ry re­view times are much changed from a year ago, but in all fair­ness to the group, it was a bad ques­tion. A decade ago there was a hard push to get the agency to re­spond more quick­ly. New rules were adopt­ed, the agency was left with mul­ti­ple pro­grams to step the gas on drug re­views. But sev­er­al ex­ecs not­ed that a year isn’t much time to as­sess any sig­nif­i­cant changes in some­thing like agency re­spon­sive­ness.

Sev­en­ty per­cent said there was no change over a year ago.

Al­so, when you talk about the FDA, most peo­ple in the in­dus­try don’t view it as a mono­lith­ic group that moves in uni­son.

“This varies a lot from branch to branch: on­col­o­gy di­vi­sion is awe­some, fast ap­provals and ex­cel­lent re­views.”

“Great mo­men­tum for tru­ly in­no­v­a­tive can­cer drugs.”

“Af­ter the first ex vi­vo gene ther­a­py ap­proval we be­lieve that for cell and gene ther­a­pies the path is short­er.”

Quite a few of the com­ments, though, al­so re­flect­ed the fact that many peo­ple in biotech don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think they’ll be fac­ing the FDA or the EMA — ex­its should come much soon­er than any sit-down with the reg­u­la­tors.

---

Out­sourc­ing

Out­sourc­ing much R&D? Yes, and more.

Every time we do a sur­vey for the first four quar­ters, I’m go­ing to add one an­nu­al ques­tion and leave it alone for 12 months be­fore re­vis­it­ing it. Some things just don’t change all that fast. This first an­nu­al ques­tion gets to a trend Ar­salan Arif and I have been watch­ing for more than a decade: Out­sourc­ing.

The av­er­age biotech start­up tem­plate is con­struct­ed on a foun­da­tion of out­sourc­ing. There are some ex­cep­tions, es­pe­cial­ly as com­pa­nies with new tech­nolo­gies look to ramp up their own in-house man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties. But for most, you raise mon­ey in or­der to pay a lot of it out to CROs and CMOs to do much of the heavy lift­ing. The em­pha­sis typ­i­cal­ly is on keep­ing in-house  teams small.

So I want­ed to get a bet­ter idea of the lev­el of out­sourc­ing work that is go­ing on now. And it turns out to be quite a lot.

A bit more than half said they out­source most of their drug de­vel­op­ment work. One in 5 said “about half” and an­oth­er one in 5 said “some.”

In ad­di­tion, ful­ly 48% of the ex­ecs in the sur­vey said they ex­pect to in­crease the amount of out­sourc­ing they do in 2017. Forty-three per­cent ex­pect it to re­main flat while on­ly 5% are look­ing for it to drop.

---

Pric­ing

Brac­ing for a tougher re­im­burse­ment mod­el

It’s hard to com­plete a day’s work in this busi­ness with­out hear­ing some­thing about the on­go­ing de­bate over drug pric­ing. New scan­dals over out­ra­geous price hikes on old ther­a­pies seem to erupt reg­u­lar­ly now, with a pa­rade of biotech ex­ecs be­ing sub­poe­naed to tes­ti­fy be­fore an­gry law­mak­ers. My­lan, Valeant, Tur­ing. Who’s next? And each new con­tro­ver­sy breeds Tweets from in­flu­en­tial politi­cians like Hillary Clin­ton.

So has the din of de­bate over high drug prices in the US af­fect­ed the way drug de­vel­op­ers are work­ing?

Two thirds of our sur­vey group said no. In many cas­es, the com­ments sec­tion made clear that’s be­cause they’ve had this sub­ject in mind for some time. Many be­lieve that keep­ing fo­cused on tru­ly im­por­tant new ther­a­pies that make a dif­fer­ence to peo­ple’s health is the one fun­da­men­tal ap­proach to guard­ing against a pric­ing back­lash that will stay rel­e­vant.

“We on­ly fo­cus on drugs that can make a big im­pact on pa­tients.”

A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber are ex­pect­ing that re­im­burse­ment will be reined in in the com­ing years. They’re al­ready plan­ning to de­vel­op new ther­a­pies that can do well in that kind of an en­vi­ron­ment.

“We are us­ing con­ser­v­a­tive as­sump­tions for re­im­burse­ment lev­els in the fu­ture.”

Not all drugs are cre­at­ed equal­ly, though, and some de­vel­op­ers want to be care­ful that they’ve thought every­thing through.

“More dili­gent as­sess­ment of which in­di­ca­tions should dri­ve the val­ue met­rics and pric­ing de­ci­sions.”

“Yes. Al­though we work in the area of on­col­o­gy, which to date has been rel­a­tive­ly less af­fect­ed by the de­bate over drug pric­ing, we rec­og­nize that the time is com­ing for on­col­o­gy as well, and we are plan­ning ac­cord­ing­ly. One must be more thought­ful and plan­ful re­gard­ing pric­ing and plans for price in­creas­es.”

Some are just ready to trust their gut on this one.

“True in­no­va­tion will be re­ward­ed. Call me an op­ti­mist, or in­no­cent.”

---

The elec­tion: Clin­ton vs. Trump

More of an an­ti-Trump sen­ti­ment than pro-Clin­ton

Don’t mis­take the 65% sup­port that Hillary Clin­ton gets in this group as the best can­di­date for biotech as ev­i­dence of en­thu­si­asm.

“What can I say … She ac­tu­al­ly at least un­der­stands the top­ic and the ques­tions and chal­lenges. She al­so un­der­stands what she can and can­not achieve with a split Con­gress and Sen­ate.”

“While not a huge fan of Hillary ei­ther, she is the on­ly can­di­date that seems to be able to string co­her­ent thoughts to­geth­er. ”

There were sev­er­al re­spons­es like this:

Hillary Clin­ton – “Not an in­sane big­ot.”

Hillary Clin­ton – “Just spit­balling here, but I think it’ll be eas­i­er to get re­search done if we’re not in­volved in an on­go­ing nu­clear ex­change with North Ko­rea, or per­haps France.”

The 25% of re­spon­dents who saw no dif­fer­ence be­tween the two al­so hand­i­ly beat out the 10% who thought Trump would do bet­ter by biotech. Again, though, that last mi­nor­i­ty re­port had more to do with an­ti-HC think­ing than pro-Don­ald sen­ti­ment. One Don­ald Trump sup­port­er not­ed:

“Hillary wants to move our coun­try to a so­cial­ized med­i­cine mod­el.”

An­oth­er:

“Don’t get me wrong, he would be a ter­ri­ble pres­i­dent, but would be am­biva­lent to biotech where­as Hillary is more like­ly to have com­mit­ted her­self to an an­tag­o­nis­tic role.”

There was at least one en­thu­si­as­tic Trump sup­port­er in the mix.

“Bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ue to US of biotech in­dus­try in terms of in­no­va­tion, jobs and lead­er­ship and how ap­pro­pri­ate val­ue based pric­ing fu­els more dis­cov­er and in­no­va­tion.”

You don’t come away from this last ques­tion on the elec­tion with a sense that many peo­ple in biotech are look­ing for­ward to watch­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny, re­gard­less of who wins the elec­tion. Most, though, would clear­ly pre­fer just about any­one oth­er than Trump.

 

---

 

Thanks to our End­points 100 ex­ec­u­tives be­low for their par­tic­i­pa­tion

An­drea Pfeifer	AC Im­mune
Ron Co­hen	Acor­da
Rick Orr	Ad­ynxx
Mary Szela	Aege­ri­on Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals
David Schenkein	Agios
Richard Pops	Alk­er­mes
Alex­ey Mar­golin	Al­lena Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals
John Maraganore	Al­ny­lam
John Crow­ley	Am­i­cus
Mike Grey	Am­plyx
Hamza Suria	Anap­tys­Bio
Nor­bert Riedel	Aptinyx
Joe Payne	Arc­turus Ther­a­peu­tics
Tim Van Hauw­er­meiren	Ar­genx
Bruce Booth	At­las Ven­ture
Tito Ser­afi­ni	Atre­ca
Na­tal­ie Holles	Au­dentes Ther­a­peu­tics, Inc.
Jay Lichter	Aval­on Ven­tures
Carmine N. Sten­gone	Ave­las Bio­sciences, Inc.
Robert Con­nel­ly	Ax­cel­la (Pronu­tria)
Howard Liang	BeiGene
Jean-Jacques Bi­en­aimé	Bio­Marin Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal
Jef­frey Al­bers	Blue­print Med­i­cines
An­drew J. Phillips	C4 Ther­a­peu­tics
Gregg San­do	Cell Med­ica
Prab­ha­vathi Fer­nan­des	Cem­pra
Art Krieg	Check­mate Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals
Jeff Stein	Cidara
Lau­ra Shawver	Cleave Bio
Doug Williams	Co­di­ak
Kei­th Dionne	Con­stel­la­tion Phar­ma
Yu­val Co­hen	Cor­bus Phar­ma
ROBERT I. BLUM	Cy­to­ki­net­ics, Inc.
Sean Mc­Carthy	Cy­tomX Ther­a­peu­tics
Steve Holtz­man	Deci­bel Ther­a­peu­tics
Ryan Watts	De­nali
Kevin Ju­dice	DiCE Mol­e­cules
An­nal­isa Jenk­ins	Di­men­sion Ther­a­peu­tics
Geral­dine Hamil­ton	Em­u­late
Tim Mayleben	Es­pe­ri­on
David Giljo­hann	Ex­i­cure
Alexan­der Pas­teur	F-Prime Cap­i­tal Part­ners
John Hau­rum	F-star
Greg Ver­dine	Fog Phar­ma
Sander Slootweg	For­bion Cap­i­tal Part­ners
Steve Tre­gay	For­ma Ther­a­peu­tics
Michael Pelli­ni	Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine
Robert Gould	Ful­crum Ther­a­peu­tics
Mark Vel­le­ca	G1 Ther­a­peu­tics
Pier­lui­gi Parac­chi	GENEN­TA Sci­ence
Chip Clark	Geno­cea Bio­sciences
He­len Tor­ley	Halozyme
Mal­colm Weir	Hep­tares
Rich Hey­man	Hey­man Biotech
Rus­sell Hern­don	Hy­dra Bio­sciences
Eliot Forster	Im­muno­core
Hervé Hop­penot	In­cyte
Nes­san Berming­ham	In­tel­lia Ther­a­puet­ics
Pe­ter Hecht	Iron­wood
Kim Cobleigh Drap­kin	Jounce Ther­a­peu­tics
Cameron Dur­rant	Kalo­Bios
Arie Bellde­grun	Kite Phar­ma
Troy Wil­son	Ku­ra On­col­o­gy
Paul Sekhri	Lyc­era Corp.
Kees Been	Lyso­so­mal Ther­a­peu­tics
Denise Scots-Knight	Mereo Bio­phar­ma
An­na Pro­topa­pas	Mer­sana Ther­a­peu­tics
Ju­lia Owens	Mil­len­do
Chuck Baum	Mi­rati Ther­a­peu­tics
Stephane Ban­cel	Mod­er­na
Praveen Tipir­neni	Mor­phic Ther­a­peu­tic
Tas­sos Gi­anakakos	MyoKar­dia
George P. Vla­suk	Nav­i­tor Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Inc.
David Mott	NEA
Jeff Jonker	NGM Bio
Don Nichol­son	Nim­bus Ther­a­peu­tics
Jon Con­gle­ton	Ni­valis Ther­a­peu­tics
Clif­ford J. Stocks	On­coRe­sponse
Je­re­my Levin	Ovid Ther­a­peu­tics
Bernard Coulie	Pli­ant Ther­a­peu­tics
Kevin Bit­ter­man	Po­laris Part­ners
Dale Schenk	Prothena
John Bea­dle	PsiOxus
Alan Auer­bach	Puma
Dou­glas Tre­co	Ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals
Robert Ward	Ra­dius
Olav Helle­bø	ReNeu­ron Group plc
Robert Cof­fin	Replimune
Clay Sie­gall	Seat­tle Ge­net­ics
Glenn Ned­win	Sec­ond Genome
Wern­er Cautreels	Se­lec­ta
An­toine Pa­piernik	Sofinno­va
Ar­mon Sharei	SQZ Ther­a­peu­tics
Glyn Ed­wards	Sum­mit Ther­a­peu­tics plc
Detlev Bin­iszkiewicz	Sur­face On­col­o­gy
Kate Bing­ham	SV Life Sci­ences
Nan­cy Si­mon­ian	Sy­ros Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals
Lon­nie Moul­der	Tesaro
Mary Lynne Hed­ley	Tesaro
Ed­uar­do Bra­vo	Tigenix, SAU
Max­ine Gowen	Treve­na
Niclas Stiern­holm	Tril­li­um Ther­a­peu­tics
Bernat Olle	Vedan­ta
Lau­rence Reid	Warp Dri­ve Bio
Steve Yang	WuXi AppTec
Rachel King	Gly­coMimet­ics