Title: Adventures in Biotechnology
1Adventures in Biotechnology Boro Dropulic PhD,
MBA
2Overview
- Background
- Decision to Start a Biotech
- Biotech Business Models
- Financing of Biotech Companies
- Modes of Productivity Relationship to Business
Models - The relationship between Business Models and
Investment - Case Study Lentigen Business Presentation
3Background
- PhD in Australia (University of Western
Australia) - Fogarty Fellow at NIH Bld 10 then Bld 4
- Embryonic Stem Cells
- Gene Therapy
- Johns Hopkins University
- HIV vectors targeted to HIV infected cells (new
IP) - VIRxSYS
- First group to initiate and complete Lentiviral
vector clinical trial (gene therapy for HIV
infection) - MBA (Johns Hopkins University)
- Lentigen
- Broad business Model
4Starting a Biotech Company
- Defining the technology
- Can the technology be used for multiple uses?
- Licensing strategy vs starting a biotech company
- If decision to start a company then
- What are the objectives?
- Sell the company to large biotech or pharma
- Grow the company and license out products
- Organization and focus of the company
- Single product focus ? short term exit strategy
- Multiple products ? long term exit strategy
5Therapeutic Biotech Business Model
6Milestone driven value - technology
7Financing of Biotech
8Financing of Biotech
OR Derive revenue streams from the sale of
product or services (research tools products
services) Smaller market potential - more
difficult to attract investors - revenue streams
are much smaller than the therapeutic or
vaccine markets - requires organic growth
strategies
9The Very High Risk Nature of the Conventional
Biotech Business Model
- High risk high failure rate
- Especially true for biotech focused upon
development of biologics - Failure not always related to science
- Investor understanding of the technology and
product development cycle time is very important - Financing strategy must match product development
cycle time
10Potential Saving Graces
- Government Grants (SBIR etc)
- Private Foundation Grants
- Contracts (Government or Private/Foundation)
- Out-license portions of the technology
- Other financing models
11Chimeric Business Models for High Risk
Technologies
Long Lead Times to Therapeutic Markets Gene
Therapy Cellular Therapies Stem Cell
Therapy Vaccines (viral vector) RNAi (viral
vector shRNAi)
Therapeutics
Therapeutics
Validation / Growth
Service / Research Products
Service / Research Products
Decreased Risk vs. Lack of Focus
12Models of productivity
Geoff Race CFO Pangenetics Index Forum
2007 Stresa, Italy
Young Genius
Old Master
Femme à la resille (Woman in a hairnet), 1938,
by Pablo Picasso.
Still Life with Carafe, Sugar Bowl, Bottle,
Pomegranates, and Watermelon, 1906, by Paul
Cezanne
value
Paintings most valuable early work
Paintings most valuable late-in-life work
13Comparison of Productivity Models
- Young Genius
- Innovation
- Non-linear concept
- Short term horizon
- Rapid, immediate
- Low of objectives
- Single focus
- Singularity of Purpose
- Virtual simplicity
- High Risk
- No track record
- Old Master
- Experimentation
- Process driven
- Long term view
- Quality mindset
- Higher of goals
- Competing priorities
- Complexity/ Integrated
- infrastructure
- Low Risk
- Track record
14Comparison of Business Models
- Single product Biotech Company
- Innovation
- Short term horizon
- Low of objectives
- Singularity of Purpose
- High Risk
- Concept Based Value Growth
- Multiple product Biotech Company
- Experimentation
- Long term view
- Higher of goals
- Complexity/ Integrated
- Low Risk
- Linear Value Growth
15Comparison of Business Models
- Single Product Biotech
- Innovation
- Short term horizon
- Low of objectives
- Singularity of Purpose
- Multiple Phases
- High Risk
- Concept Based Value Growth
- ACQUIRED
- Multi Product Biotech
- Experimentation
- Long term view
- Higher of goals
- Complexity/ Integrated
- Lifes Work
- Low Risk
- Linear Value Growth
- IPO - ALLIANCES
BOTH ARE VALID GROWTH STRATEGIES
16Growth Strategy Needs to Match Investor Strategy
- Investor Strategies
- Large number of singly focused companies vs few
technological platform companies - Shorter exit time for singly focused companies,
but high risk - Longer exit time for technological platform
companies, but lower risk - Investor Sophistication Important
- Choice of Investor Critical for ultimate success
17January 2008
18Safe Harbor and Confidentiality
- The following information is confidential and
should not be distributed without the permission
of Lentigen Corporation. This presentation
contains certain forward looking statements based
on Lentigens current beliefs and expectations
about future events. These statements are
subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and
assumptions and are not necessarily predictive of
future results. Actual results may differ
materially from those anticipated in this
presentation depending upon a variety of factors
including development of manufacturing
procedures, market size and revenues, potential
competition, regulatory compliance, operating
effectiveness and other factors that may not be
currently considered as material.
19Summary
- Lentiviral Vector (LV) gene delivery technology
- Four phase I/II clinical trials in 2008/9
- Eight NIH/DOD grants supporting future
therapeutic pipeline - Alliance with ThermoFisher - LV RNAi research
tools - Dominant Intellectual Property Position
- Experienced management team and board of
directors - Upcoming Milestones
20Lentigen Overview
- Established 2004
- Location
- Gaithersburg, Maryland 2008Q1
- 25,000 ft2 multi-product GMP facilities
- Employees 40
- Technology platform focus
- Lentiviral vector mediated gene delivery
- Areas of application
- Vaccines Therapeutics
- Research and Drug Discovery Tools
21Lentiviral vector (LV) gene delivery
- Most efficient, stable gene delivery system known
- LentiMax LV system
- High titer, low toxicity
- Scalable manufacturing process
- Bench to clinic translatability
22Efficient stable gene delivery with LV-GFP
(Green Fluorescent Protein)
Cells before addition of LV-GFP
98.7
Cells after gene delivery with LV-GFP
Human kidney cells
23Vaccine Therapeutic Pipeline
INDICATION GLIOBLASTOMA CANCER
(GVHD) INFLUENZA VACC. ANEMIA HEPATITIS
C LEUKEMIA (CLL) COR. ARTERY DIS. LYMPHOMA
(EBV) HEMOPHILIA MELANOMA
24Glioblastoma
- 18,000 per year (USA) cases with comparable
market in Europe - 50 malignant with 40 week survival
- Market size estimate - 300 million
- Easily addressable patient population
- Patients concentrated at surgical centers
- Limited sales force
- Targeted physicians
- No good current treatment available
- Treatments limited by toxicity Temezolomide (TMZ)
effectively treats disease - but prolonged TMZ treatment results in severe
lymphopenia and thrombocytopenia ? death
25Glioblastoma therapy using LV-MGMT
- Protection of stem cells from TMZ toxicity
- ? longer TMZ treatment
- ? better outcomes for patients
- LV-MGMT can protect stem cells from effects of
TMZ - Proof of concept shown in dogs and monkeys
- Clinical trial endpoints are short 3 weeks
- CWRU (Dr S. Gerson)
- Broadly applicable
- CML, AML, HIV etc
- IP exclusively licensed
TEMEZOLOMIDE
LV MGMT
KILLTUMOR
PROTECT STEM CELLS
STEM CELLS
Bone Marrow Transplantation
26Graft versus Host Disease (GVHD)
- In 2005 7,250 allogenic transplants in USA and
10,000 worldwide - 50 develop chronic GvHD
- Market size estimate - 300M to 500M
- Potential for huge savings to healthcare system
- Easily addressable patient population
- Patients concentrated at transplant centers
- Limited sales force
- Targeted physicians
- No good current treatment available
27GVHD therapy using LV-TMPK
- Two technological advances
- LV efficient gene delivery
- TMPK human safety gene
- Proof of concept shown in primary human T cells
- Short clinical trial endpoints 3 weeks to 3
months - CRADA with NIH 2 sites Drs Gress, Fowler,
others - Broadly applicable to other diseases cancer,
HIV etc - IP exclusively licensed
DONOR
28Pandemic Seasonal Influenza
- Influenza infects 10-20 of the population every
year and causes 500,000 deaths - Approximately 300 million doses produced globally
- Market Size 1B in 2004, rapidly expanding
market - Need for vaccine MFG efficiencies
- Egg manufacturing not cost effective
- Cell culture with L.A. virus is limiting
- Need for development of a rapid and efficient
cell culture based vaccine manufacturing platform
29LV-IFVX Influenza VLP vaccine
Synthesized gene cloned into LV 1 week
- Rapid manufacturing platform
- weeks not months MFG time
- Virus Like Particles (VLP)
- highly immunogenic
- Exact strain match
- no genetic drift during production
- Continuous production of VLP
- advantage over batch production
- Safe
- VLPs are genetically inactive
- IP protected
LV manufacture and QC testing 1 week
LV transduction 1 day
Scale Up cells 3 weeks
Vaccine Purification 1 day
30Potent Immune Response in Mice
Strong immune response generated in mice against
Lentigens H5N1 VLP vaccine (blue) and vaccine
with adjuvant (purple) pre-bleed controls (red)
31Biogenerics Proprietary Biologics
- Biologics that are coming off-patent are worth
30B - Erythropoietin, cytokines, coagulation factors,
antigens, McAbs - COGS critically important for competing in the
protein MFG markets - Efficiencies gained by decreasing time to market
- Efficiencies gained by increasing yield from cell
lines - LVs can reduce time to market and decrease COGS
- High copy numbers in cells without gene
amplification - Integration in areas of open chromatin ? higher
expression
32Erythropoietin production
- Gold Standard
- Efficient
- Bulk CHO Cells 2.5 g/L
- No cell cloning
- No selection
- No enhancement of cell growth conditions
- Levels of 5 10 g/L attainable with isolation
of cell clones
33Research Drug Discovery Tools Pipeline
RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCT LAUNCHED
PRODUCT SMARTVECTOR RNAi CUSTOM
LVs LENTI-GFP, YFP, LUC LV MFG (GLP,
GMP) PROTEIN EXPRESSION LENTIKIT LENTI
PROMOTER LENTI cDNA LIBRARY LENTI RNAi
LIBRARY LENTI EXPRESS KIT LENTI CELL LINES
- Alliance with ThermoFisher Scientific to market
LV RNAi products
34SMARTvector RNAi Effective gene silencing
GAPDH knockdown 9 days post-transduction with
SmartVector shRNAi Lentiviral vector particles
SHSY5Y neuronal cells Fixed and stained with
GAPDH antibody (red) and Hoechst (blue)
35Effective gene silencing in a wide variety of
cells
Neuronal cells
Stem cells
Suspension cells
Suspension cells
75
Difficult-to-Transfect
36Intellectual Property
- Dominant patent estate for Lentiviral vectors
- Lentigen (GBP IP) has acquired the entire Cell
Genesys Lentiviral vector IP portfolio - Non-provisional patent coverage of
- Novel LV compositions and methods
- Use of LVs for Influenza VLP manufacturing
- Use of Novel LVs for protein manufacturing
- Lentigen has exclusively in-licensed several key
payload technologies - TMPK LentiSafe technology
- MGMT LentiSelect technology
- Lentigen continues to develop and in-license
additional key proprietary intellectual property
37Grants
- Seven (7) SBIR Grants from National Institutes of
Health - Leading Clinical Centers Investigators
- Oncology
- Infectious Diseases
- STTR Grant from Department of Defense
- Efficient Manufacture of Monoclonal Antibodies in
the National Stockpile - MIPS Grant
- Development of new animal models for cancer
38Experienced Management
- Boro Dropulic, PhD, MBA - Founder and CEO
- 19 years experience
- Founder CSO of VIRxSYS, Johns Hopkins
University, NIH - Sponsor Investigator of first Lentiviral Vector
Clinical trial in humans - Adam Sachs, MSE President, Commercial
Operations - 23 years experience
- Life Technologies (now Invitrogen), Qiagen,
Origene - Global Director for Manufacturing at Qiagen
- Gregory Feulner, PhD, JD VP, Business
Development - 19 years experience
- NIH, Johns Hopkins, Gene Logic Inc., Galileo
Genomics, 3M - Yung-Nien Chang, PhD VP, Vector Development
- 22 years of experience
- Johns Hopkins University, VIRxSYS, NIH, GTI (now
Novartis)
39Board of Directors
- David Wetherell Chairman of the Board
- Former Chairman, CMGI,
- Founder, Greenwich Biotech Ventures
- Boro Dropulic, PhD, MBA
- Douglas Lind, MD
- Managing Partner of Accendx Management LLC
- Former Senior Biotech. Equity Analyst at Morgan
Stanley PaineWebber - John McMullen, JD, MBA
- Managing Principal of Cambridge Meridian Group
- Republican Nominee for Senate, VT (2004)
- Robert Breyer
- Former President/COO of Alkermes
- Former President and General Manager of Eli Lilly
Italy - Barrie Carter, PhD
- EVP and CSO of Targeted Genetics
- Former Chief of the Lab. of Mol. Cell Biology
at the NIH
40Upcoming Milestones
- Initiate phase I/II clinical trials for GVHD
Glioblastoma - Complete pre-clinical studies for Influenza
vaccine and Erythropoietin protein product - Continue development of pipeline for therapeutic
vaccine products, leveraging grant funding
mechanisms - Expand alliance with ThermoFisher and other
partners - Certify Lentigens new GMP manufacturing
facilities - Complete additional financing
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