New Approaches to Biomedical Innovation

An invitation-only workshop jointly organized by Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE).

Meeting Co-Hosts: Sanmay Das, WUSTL; Jennifer Dlugosz, WUSTL; Barton Hamilton, WUSTL; Andrew Lo, MIT; Rich Ryffel, WUSTL; Anjan Thakor, WUSTL

Date: May 31, 2018

Location: Bauer Hall 230 (2nd Floor), Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri

This invitation-only meeting brought together a small group of key stakeholders and thought leaders to explore novel business models and financial vehicles for raising and deploying funds for early-stage biomedical research and drug development in a scalable and profitable manner.

One of the key challenges we aimed to address is the risk and uncertainty that comes with early-stage and translational medicine. Although we are seeing incredible scientific advancements on a near-daily basis, we are also seeing increased risk and complexity as a result of these breakthroughs. This inevitably leads to an outflow of capital for the riskiest—and potentially most transformative—R&D efforts as investors and other stakeholders seek other more attractive opportunities. For example, in the case of cancer, the recent popularity of immuno-oncology has come at the expense of other potentially valuable therapeutic approaches to treating the disease. Consistent with the central tenet of modern finance—investors don’t like risk—many large pharmaceutical and biotech companies focus on “game changing” therapeutic modalities only after their risk has been reduced to their shareholders’ satisfaction.

Participants engaged in active dialogue regarding specific funding needs, potential new business and legal structures, and new sources of capital to fund such enterprises. Organized as a series of panel discussions with substantial audience participation, topics included:

• Opportunities and challenges in oncology drug development
• Clinical trial design and implications for commercialization
• The  role of big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence
• New business and financing models

Objective: To develop actionable plans for catalyzing early-stage biomedical research and therapeutic development.

• James Bullard, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Graham Colditz, Washington University School of Medicine
• Laura Esserman, University of California San Francisco
• Jennifer Goldstein, Silicon Valley Bank
• Stuart Greenbaum, Washington University in St. Louis
• Sean Khozin, FDA Oncology Center of Excellence
• Michael Kinch, Washington University in St. Louis
• Jerry Lee, National Cancer Institute at NIH
• Pablo Legorreta, Royalty Pharma
• J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society
• Parag Mallick, Stanford University
• Bill Peck, Washington University in St. Louis
• Richard Scheller, 23andMe
• Greg Simon, Biden Cancer Initiative

Thursday, May 31, 2018
7:30am—6:00pm
Bauer Hall 230 (2nd Floor)
Olin Business School
Washington University at St. Louis
St. Louis, MO 63130
(map)

Agenda

Background reading material is available to conference participants only. Please CLICK HERE to access the password-protected area.