At the beginning of June, Jan Nilsson, former CEO and now Senior Advisor at CombiGene, together with Zyneyro’s CEO Peter Horn Møller and Scientific Advisor Kenneth Lindegaard Madsen, attended the BIO International Convention, which is the world’s largest partner event in biotechnology. This year, the meeting was held in San Diego and attracted more than 5,000 companies and 20,000 participants from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academia, non-profit organizations, government and investors from around the world.
CombiGene’s main purpose for participating in the event was to meet with pharmaceutical companies to present – in order to eventually out-license – the two projects COZY and CG01. Some meetings, however, were instead about sourcing of new projects at an early stage that could be interesting for CombiGene to license.
Jan had about fifteen meetings with representatives from companies of various sizes and nationalities, mainly from Japan, the USA, South Korea and China. Some of the meetings – especially those where the other party was mainly interested in pain – were held together with Peter.
At these types of meetings, I act as the company’s empath. I create interest in our portfolio and make valuable contacts, which we can then build on and create a deeper connection with.
The initial contacts are usually with someone in business development. They are the ones who screen the projects. The next step is to arrange meetings between researchers and, if the company is still interested, sign a non-disclosure agreement for confidential information to be shared, giving researchers and management a deeper knowledge of the projects and their possible potential within that company.
This is a big investment for us, both in time and money, but our assessment is that this is good value for the money and work we put in. Based on the meetings I have had, I can conclude that we have an interesting portfolio that engages potential recipients. The process of finally signing a contract with a partner is long, and many relationships naturally end (for various reasons) along the way, but the process must always start with a mutual interest.