An invitation-only workshop jointly organized by the University of Southern California (USC), the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator at Harvard Business School, and the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering (LFE) with the participation of the American Cancer Society.
Organizing Committee: Cary Frydman, USC Marshall; Kathy Giusti, HBS Kraft; Richard Hamermesh, HBS Kraft; Gerald Hoberg, USC Marshall; Suh-Pyng Ku, USC Marshall; Andrew Lo, MIT LFE; Rodney Ramcharan, USC Marshall; Lynda Roman, USC Keck
Date: June 10, 2019
Location: Jill and Frank Fertitta Hall, Marshall Business School, University of Southern California
610 Childs Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089
With a five-year relative survival rate of less than 50%, ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal gynecologic malignancies worldwide and ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women. Yet relative to breast cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma, progress has been considerably slower in the development of new treatments for ovarian cancer over the past decade. By convening a group of key stakeholders and thought leaders, our goal is to develop a comprehensive and actionable plan for accelerating the pace of innovation to address this unmet medical need.
With a particular focus on 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 aim 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.
This meeting brought together a small group of key stakeholders and thought leaders from academic medical centers and university research laboratories, financial institutions, pharma and biotech, government, non-profits, and patient advocates to explore ways to reduce the risk and uncertainty. 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 ovarian cancer therapeutic development
- Clinical trial design and implications for commercialization
- The role of big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence
- New business and financing models, and investor perspectives
Organizing Staff: Jayna Cummings, LFE; Terry Lichvar, USC Marshall; Crystal Myler, LFE