Survival Guide for Life Sciences: Invent, Collaborate

Sanofi CEO Christopher Viehbacher, the opening speaker for the 2012 CED Life Science Conference, laid the groundwork with a call for innovation and collaboration.

He told the audience that biopharma R&D costs in the U.S. alone tote up $100 billion a year to produce 20 to 30 new Food and Drug Administration approvals. The payback per R&D dollar spent, he said, is 70 cents.

New ways of doing business are required when economies turn south, risk aversion rises and the screws tighten even more on profits.

For Sanofi, one approach has been to collaborate with a major Boston venture capital company, Third Rock Ventures, in a $125 million launch of a new company, Warp Drive Bio.

Tim Willis, president and CEO of Morrisville medical device company TearScience, told attendees he’d weigh an offshore IPO as an option to bring shareholder cash to his company.

In October 2011, the 6-year-old privately held firm secured a $15 million venture debt deal with Oxford Finance and Silicon Valley Bank. That was on top of a year-earlier $44.5 million in award-winning Series C funding

TearScience has just begun selling its proprietary dry-eye testing and treatment system in the U.S., but Willis thinks getting a cash infusion by going public in the U.S. carries bigger economic and regulatory hurdles than what he might find elsewhere.

Mark Sirgo, CEO of Raleigh’s BioDelivery Sciences International, has already seen his company go public. But beyond shareholder equity, BDSI is also tapping into funding through partnering

BDSI was just notified that it has gotten its long-awaited U.S. patent for its dissolvable BEMA drug-eluting cheek patch, which opened the money bags of its partner, Endo Pharmaceuticals. Hitting the milestone brings BDSI a $15 million check from the partnership, said Sirgo, who appeared with Willis on a panel entitled “How to Survive in 2012 and Beyond.”

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