Change Highlights 2012 CED Life Science Conference

Deborah Dunsire, M.D., couldn’t have known when she prepared her closing remarks for the 2012 CED Life Science Conference in Raleigh how accurately they would sum up the two-day talk-and-network fest.

Dunsire, president and CEO of Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company, riffed on the Wizard of Oz “This isn’t Kansas anymore” theme. And it had been made abundantly clear from speakers and panelists addressing the record crowd exceeding 950 throughout the conference that things aren’t as they once were.

Pessimists could have come away with a familiar sense of gloom, thanks to the reminders that:

• Government scrutiny of new therapies and every other aspect of health care will continue growing while reimbursements will go the other direction.
• All-cash exit strategies aren’t the sweet deals for life-science companies they were only five or six years ago. And they never will be again.
• Funding sources are becoming increasingly risk-averse.
•  The days of “me-too” blockbuster drugs are gone. If you don’t have a truly new way to whack or prevent a disease, to fill an unmet medical need, don’t waste time and money developing a wish.

Like Dorothy’s Wizard companions, success in today’s global life-science marketplace requires courage, intelligence and heart.

But then pessimists don’t start or finance life-science companies anyway. So there’s no reason to expect there would be any at this conference.

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