A. Creative Financing Options And Current Deal Trends

1.

Panel: Leveraging Company Assets To Form Innovative Deal Structures
Today's market has made raising capital extremely difficult, and has forced companies to think creatively about how to finance their operations. Hear from industry leading biotechs who have successfully managed to navigate through these precarious financial environments using their assets to negotiate strong partnerships.

• Using technology platforms, experience sales forces and other company assets to fund ongoing operations
• Communicating the value of your company’s capabilities to potential investors
• Building a partnership with big Pharma while remaining an active player in the decision making process
• Sharing best practices with Biotech leaders on

2.

Workshop: Understanding The Basics Of Financing To Raise More Capital
Remaining afloat in the current economy requires a clear understanding of the financial options available to companies as they establish themselves in the biotech environment. This workshop will help demystify available resources and how to use them to your advantage.

• Understanding the potential options available to private and public biotechs
• Identifying benefits and challenges of each option to determine which would be best for your company
• Q&A: Taking the opportunity to ask specific questions about your particular company situations and challenges

3.

Valuing The Ex-US Market To Gain A Better Perspective Of A Compound's Potential
Until recently, a compound's value was largely based on its market opportunities in the US market. Recent changes in the global population and emerging middle classes in the developing world have shifted this focus, changing traditional valuation theories. This session will identify how this will affect partnering strategies for companies working with compounds in international market opportunities.

• Identifying market opportunities outside of the US
• Understanding how these market opportunities should be valued, given reimbursement and regulatory environments
• Leveraging the ex-US market during partnership negotations

4.

Panel: Understanding Current Deal Trends To Position Yourself Attractively In Today's Market
Understanding the market picture is indispensable to being able to negotiate fair partnership terms. Evaluating the impact of new compounds, political changes, market fluctuations and other critical factors can help you optimize collaborations with other companies. This session will provide insightful commentary from industry experts to explain the key trends in  pharmaceutical partnerships today.

• Gaining a clear sense of the present deal environment and current deal values
• Forecasting what deal structures will be palatable in the next year
• Closing lucrative deals while maintaining the highest profit margin possible

5.

Panel: Working With Government And Non-Governmental Organizations To Secure Non-Dilutive Capital
Traditional sources of funding, such as big pharma, venture capital and the public market are becoming more scarce as competition for these sources becomes more aggressive. Alternative sources of funding have thus become a much more important as substitutes for budgetary provisions.

• Knowing which programs are applicable to your company’s compounds and technology platforms
• Demonstrating enough value to these organizations to receive their grant funds
• Discussing real world examples from biotech and pharmaceutical leaders

6.

Structuring A Dossier To Better Present Your Company To Venture Capital
As a small biotech, ensuring rapid funding is crucial to compound research and development: your company's lifeline. This session will provide in-depth information on how to make working with venture capitals as smooth as possible.

• Understanding what to present to a venture capital fund when they are evaluating investing in your company
• Focusing on specific formats and documents to provide to ensure that you are seen as a profitable investment
• Identifying common pitfalls that could make your company less attractive to a venture capital

7.

Workshop: Understanding What To Provide To Big Pharma During The Partnership Negotiation
Knowing how to approach the gates of big pharma can be daunting. With so any other biotechs vying for partnerships with big pharma, the struggle to make your dossier outstanding has never been more pressing. This hands-on workshop will allow you to interact with pharmaceutical executives to understand the best way to approach partnerships discussions.

• Improving your current dossier to support your business development efforts
• Working through a must-have list of documents and data to present to a potential partner to be seen a serious contender
• Generating the right formats to ensure that your potential partner can gain an immediate understanding of the value of your compound

B. Evaluating Reimbursement and Pricing Strategies In a Changing Political Environment

8.

Panel: Evaluating How The Change In Administration Could Affect Current Pricing And Reimbursement Policies
With the elections just a few months away, healthcare policy has been discussed in a variety of forums. How will the change in administration affect reimbursement policy? Will there be other major reverberations from a change in the political environment? How can you ensure that your company will not be negatively affected by these changes? Join a panel of industry experts in this exciting session to identify what challenges could lie ahead.

• Revisiting the current US policies on pricing and reimbursement.
• Discussing how the election could change these policies
• Understanding how to take advantage of these trends to gain a competitive edge

C. Understanding The Present Regulatory Environment And How To Build Strong Relationships With FDA

9.

Panel: Building A Strong Relationship With The FDA To Clearly Delineate Expectations Early In Compound Development
A crucial part of getting your drug to market is ensuring rapid approval by FDA. Understanding FDA expectations early can be tricky, but confusion around endpoints for clinical trials can be devastating and costly. In this session, peers who have developed strong relationships with FDA to rapidly progress through the approval process will share their insight, and provide guidance on how to get the answers you need to navigate through FDA regulations.

• Forming your communications with FDA to manage trials, ensuring approvals as early as possible
• Improving your approach to information sharing with regulatory agencies to build a solid foundation
• Avoiding regulatory pitfalls by keeping open communication channels with FDA regulators

10.

FDA Regulatory Update
Confused about FDA requirements? Challenged by regulatory updates? Join an FDA representative to acquire current knowledge on the FDA's expectations and how to work with the agency to ensure a smooth clinical trial process.

• Understanding current agency initiatives and how you can align your current business model
• Outlining how FDA describes each phase of clinical trials to help understand where your company is at the time of negotiation
• Q&A: Engaging in in-depth discussions with an FDA representative

D. Effective Partnering Strategies To Optimize Business Development Activities And Ensure Long-Term Value

11.

Preparing Your Company’s Capabilities For Future In-Licensing Opportunities
Current trends show that the quickest route to portfolio diversification remains acquisition and in-licensing. As your company grows, aligning your business model to prepare yourself for this next phase will help strengthen your position in years to come. This session will help develop strategies to ensure that you build a company prepared to integrate in-licensed capabilities in the future.

• Prioritizing your company’s core capabilities
• Evaluating areas of future expansion
• Creating a network of potential partners that could help add value to your company’s assets

12.

Panel: Finding The Right Time To Partner
Today's big pharma executives have begun looking at earlier phase candidates as potential in-licensing opportunities in the face of an increasingly competitive partnering environment. Conversely, many biotechs are realizing the value of holding on to their assets until later in development. Participate in this timely discussion to evaluate what's best for you and your company.

• Evaluating the balance between absorbing the high cost of drug development and the gaining the value of a marketable drug
• Aligning corporate priorities with your partnering timeline: is this drug integral to the company’s growth or can be used to fund other core projects?
• Managing the project until the right partner can be found

13.

Planning For A Positive End To Successful Partnerships
Alliance management became a growing concern for big pharma earlier in this decade as focus shifted to in-licensing agreements to feed pipelines. Nearly ten years later, many of these very fruitful agreements are winding down, and discussion now needs to turn to how we will manage the conclusion of these relationships. Join forward thinking industry leaders to identify key points of how to deal with these new challenges.

• Aligning all partners’ goals with the partnerships final successes
• Defining the successes and challenges of the joint efforts from this relationships
• Leveraging relationships built to investigate potential new partnerships

14.

Creating Effective Partnering Strategies For Combination Drugs
As the pharmaceutical consumer is given more and more choices, it has been shown that certain drug combinations can be successfully marketed as a better option. This innovative partnership option has changed the landscape of deal negotiations as companies evaluate the opportunity to join two promising compound into one lucrative product.

• Understanding how key processes in the product lifecycle are managed differently for combination drugs
• Evaluating partners with compounds that could be combined with yours to create a value-added prescription
• Apply lessons learned from successful combination drug campaigns

E. Using Alliance Management Strategies To Improve Productivity and Profitability in Your Business

15.

Maximizing Your Partner’s Sales Force Capabilities To Optimize Commercialization Strategies
Understanding a partner's strengths is an essential part of the alliance management process. Until recently, this was limited to a company's drug pipeline. However, recent focus has been expanded to include other assets such as a company's sales force. This innovative session will look at leveraging your combined commercialization abilities to ensure that your partnered compound is marketed as effectively as possible.

• Managing your combined salesforces to reach the widest markets when both are working in the same regions
• Minimizing overlap between both salesforce’s targeted physicians
• Preventing failure: ensuring that alliance management principles are carried through to the salesforces

16.

Workshop: Maintaining Alliance Management Principles Throughout All Interactions Between Partners
Although most companies have outwardly acknowledged the importance of alliance management, many remains uncertain of how to encourage a company-wide approach to cooperation between partnering enterprises. This workshop will provide an opportunity to discuss how to best incorporate alliance management across the board to using re-enactments of common challenges to prompt discussions.

• Motivate team members outside of the alliance management function to uphold alliance management principles
• Participate in small group sessions to strategize how to improve current interactions with partners to ensure that both company's needs are being met
• Share best practices with alliance management experts to identify practical ways to ensure coherence between organizations.

17.

Panel: Effectively Managing An Alliance Through The Product Lifecycle
Identifying appropriate partnerships at each stage of lifecycle management is critical to maximizing profitability. Successful companies have begun evaluating each partner's capabilities and how they can be leveraged at each point in the product's lifecycle to ensure that their product reaches its full potential. This session will discuss how to build alliances appropriately to fulfill these requirements.

• Understanding the advantages of building an alliance at the research, development and commercialization phases of a compound's lifecycle
• Identifying the key elements of each of these alliances
• Transitioning the alliance from one phase of the product's lifecycle to another

18.

Successfully Integrating Partner Companies After An Acquisition To Ensure Continued Productivity
As market prices increase for licensing agreements, many larger companies are acquiring smaller companies instead of simply licensing one of their products. Ensuring productivity after an acquisition is largely dependent on a company's ability to ensure that company cultures have been joined seamlessly. Join Eisai's Vice-President of Business of Development, Alex Scott, as he discusses some of the strategies that have resulted in their acquisition successes.

• Assessing the strategic value of an M&A deal
• Addressing potential integration challenges
• Sharing best practices: looking at the successes of Eisai’s recent acquisitions

19.

Panel: Leveraging Current Alliances To Generate Additional Revenue
As big pharma looks to partnerships to fill pipelines, increasing competition for to license promising compounds, leveraging the pipelines of existing partners has created new possibilities to strengthen a portfolio. Hear from industry leaders who have capitalized on these opportunities, increasing their own company's profitability significantly and share their insight during this exciting presentation.

• Motivating current partners to enter into new licensing agreements
• Identifying key growth areas for a partnership
• Improving current relationships to increase the profit generated from the partnership

F. Contrasting The Specialty Pharma Model With The Current Pharmaceutical Business Model

20.

Panel: Evaluating The Sustainability Of The Specialty Pharma Model
As big pharma moves away from its previous “blockbuster” model, many specialty pharma companies have stepped up to present other fruitful alternatives. Still, many argue that the current prices often charge their customers for their products are impediments to creating a lasting model instead of a passing trend. Participate in this conversation with a panel of industry experts, representing both the conventional approach and specialty pharma's model as they discuss which elements of both models could effectively be combined in the future.

• Defining the core pillars of the specialty pharma model
• Mobilizing payers to continue reimbursing high-end pharmaceuticals
• Identifying key challenges in maintaining the growth of the specialty pharma market

21.

Strategy Shift: Changing The Traditional Business Strategies Not Be Supported By Smaller Deals To Create A Business Model Adapted To Specialty Pharma
Specialty pharma has been seen as many in the pharmaceutical industry as a segment that could remain innovative and bring life to an industry struggling with difficult financial situations and disputed research. This session will discuss the innovative strategies that have been utilized by Ovation Pharmaceuticals to implement the strengths of the specialty pharma business model.

• Identifying key business strategies that have fostered profitability in the specialty pharma era
• Modernizing traditional approaches to pharmaceutical business development and partnering to increase flexibility and rapid decision making processes
• Examining successes at Ovation Pharmaceuticals to gain a better understanding of specialty pharma’s strengths

G. Evaluating Emerging Markets And Technologies

22.

Focusing On The Environment In Developing Biotechs Arenas
With most big pharma claiming in operations in China, India and other emerging markets, the pharmaceutical industry is becoming globalized at an impressive speed. Yet many biotech hotbeds have remained unexplored, until now. Join industry leaders from around the world as they discuss how these companies can help you work in these new markets, and how you can partner with them as they begin to work in the US market.

• Identifying the key players in each of these areas
• Balancing these company’s strengths to fill in the gaps in your own operations
• Focusing on prospective partnerships to help create new opportunities

23.

Incorporating New Diagnostics Technologies To Manage Clinical Trials More Effectively
Diagnostic technologies are allowing much clearer delineation of patient populations for clinical trials. How can this be used to expedite clinical trials and reduce costs? What are the regulatory implications? This intriguing session will discuss how companies can help reduce their expenses and decrease their product's time to market using innovative diagnostic technologies.

• Identifying technologies that could help expedite the clinical process
• Complying regulatory requirements to patient selection using diagnostic technologies
• Assessing the profitable partnership opportunities with diagnostics companies

24.

Understanding New Technologies To Gain Perspective Their Impact The Next Wave Of Drug Development
What new technologies will be making waves in the months to come? How will they impact your business? Keeping abreast of these cutting-edge technologies in fundamental to remaining a profitable company. Join industry experts as they discuss the world of opportunities opening themselves up to these new technologies and the companies that incorporate them in their partnership strategies.

• Exploring the full potential of new technologies such as siRNA, drug/device combinations, and personalized medicines
• Measuring the ability to integrate these technology platforms with drugs currently in development
• Identifying key partners who are leaders in these fields

25.

Developing Government Partnerships In Highly Regulated Environments To Maximize Market Integration
In some countries, the legal system can become a significant barrier to entry. Learn from companies who have succeeded in working with foreign governing bodies to ensure that their products are commercialized effectively in these new markets.

• Minimizing the roadblocks created in environments which are heavily regulated by the local government
• Finding key partners within the government to champion your company in this new space
• Ensure that the time to market is as short as possible

H. Identifying The Key Elements Of Valuation To Best Position Yourself During Partnerships Negotiations

26.

Workshop: Understanding The Basics Of Valuation
Empower yourself during licensing negotiations by understanding how a product is valued, learning the basics from industry experts, charged with valuation on a daily basis.  Learn from these highly knowledgeable individuals how your compound will be valued so that you can discuss how potential investors and partners will view you on the market place.

• Developing a strong dossier to present to potential investors
• Learning what information will be weighted during the valuation process and how each items will be weighted to reflect an overall value
• Q&A: Clear up confusion through interactive discussion with valuation professionals

I. Aligning Strong IP Strategy With Partnering Opportunities

27.

Joining Your IP Strategy To Support Partnering Opportunities
Strong intellectual property is essential ensuring a strong position during partnering negotiations, however many biotechs struggle to tie their IP strategy to help build their business development activities. This exciting session will exploring the opportunities that IP strategy provides to position your company advantageously.

• Evaluating the best types of patents to file
• Understanding at what point in the research cycle the patent should be filed to derive the most value from the concept
• Leveraging your IP in partnership discussions to negotiate deals from a stronger position