Back Bay Life Science Report

“I have a deep belief that medtech and healthtech are going to carry us forward to markedly improve delivery and quality of healthcare.” - Jonathan P. Gertler, MD

For years, biotech has been the dominant theme in life sciences development, offering a great deal in treatment advances and in terms of investing versatility and returns potential. But with promising system solutions serving broader swaths of patients, medtech is resurging.

Medtech investment has grown dramatically over time, with scale and diversification capable of weathering economic storms and fueling expansion in the markets.

Medtech is a significant driver of our healthcare economy, contributing to more meaningful patient care solutions and technology that continue to move care further from the hospital and more toward the home.

In this episode of The Life Science Report, Back Bay Life Science Advisors’ industry podcast, Dr. Jonathan Gertler speaks with Paul LaViolette Managing Partner & COO, SV Health Investors about the varying elements of medtech investments, including structured deals and strategies, the regulatory changes that are driving medtech forward and how more cost-effective care will be a turning point for granting access to more and more patients.

Topics in this podcast include:

• The role of investment in medtech and how to match capital to the asset or company
• Why “incremental" is a four-letter word in the world of venture
• How medtech is a systems solution provider, which differs from biotech as a disease modifier based on increasing patient segmentation
• How structured deals, traditionally the territory of biotech, have found their way deeply into medtech M&A and how the public markets are offering alternatives in a more robust way than recent history has shown
• The regulatory changes for medtech in Europe and the profound impact this has on how investors and buyers make decisions

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Antibiotics act as a safety net for all of healthcare. They make medical procedures such as surgeries, childbirth and cancer treatments possible, but what happens when bacteria or other microorganisms become resistant to the drugs we use against them?

Back Bay Life Science Advisors’ Managing Director Peter Bak sits down with Marc Lemonnier, a molecular and cellular microbiologist and CEO of Antabio, a clinical stage company located in France developing novel antibiotic therapies, for a conversation on the current clinical landscape of novel agents to address antimicrobial resistance and the regional and global initiatives to tackle the issue.

Topics include:

• The growing rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
• Which global organizations are at work on this issue and their list of priority pathogens a/k/a the world’s “most wanted deadly super bugs”?
• How COVID 19 and the pandemic exacerbated the issue of AMR
• Push and pull incentives and subscription models for innovative antimicrobials and how they work in various countries around the world
• Why global access is a real issue and how to solve the problem

For more, read Back Bay Life Science Advisors' recent take on the role of investments in antimicrobials in STAT here.

Learn more about Antabio, a private biopharmaceutical company developing novel antibacterials targeting drug-resistant pathogens that are deemed a critical priority by the WHO. www.antabio.com

Make sure to subscribe to The Life Science Report podcast and follow Back Bay Life Science Advisors on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you for joining us.

As we move into 2024, Back Bay’s strategic advisors summarize key product approvals from three classes and indications over this past year, including the December CRISPR and Vertex approval of Exa-cel, Biogen and Sage’s August approval of an oral treatment for women with postpartum depression and Genmab and Roche’s May approval in oncology.

In this episode:

• CRISPR and Vertex’s approval of Exa-cel, the first CRISPR-based genetic medicine approved by the FDA in the US
• The major depressive disorder vs. postpartum depression for Biogen/Sage
• GenMab and Roche approvals
• AbbVie acquisition of Cerevel Therapeutics strengthen neuroscience pipeline

In 2023, on The Life Science Report, Back Bay covered a wide range of topics featuring stories from the frontline of healthcare development to the rising trends in cardiology to the transactional landscape of antibody drug conjugates. We always welcome listener questions or topics you’d like to learn more about. You can listen to previous episodes or submit your inquiries here.

Back Bay provides a snapshot of the healthcare markets every Monday. For IPO, Follow-On and M&A updates, subscribe to our healthcare updates.

After a summer away from podcasting, Back Bay Life Science Advisors’ Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel are back on the mic to discuss current market dynamics in liver disease with a focus on one of the most closely watched space in hepatology, MASH.

The big news includes a rebrand from NASH (non-alcohol related steatohepatitis) to MASH (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis), the FDA approval of Madrigal Pharmaceutical’s Rezdiffra and real-time court rulings in Europe that may affect the rate of play for Ocaliva, a drug used to treat adults with primary biliary cholangitis here in the US. As Christian mentions in this episode, “The path to success is not always a straight line.”

Other topics in this podcast include:

• Hepatology market dynamics over the past five years, including activity from Gilead, Novo Nordisk, Intercept and CymaBay
• How treatment for primary biliary cholangitis, an autoimmune condition, went from a one to a three-product market
• Payer monographs and what’s required for hepatology drugs
• The EMA recommendation earlier this month to revoke Ocaliva’s marketing authorization
• Which companies are active in the rare liver disease space and how they differentiate themselves

Thank you for listening. You can find previous episodes of the podcast here.

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A conversation on the rising trends in the cardiology space

Cardiology has historically been a cornerstone of large pharmaceutical portfolios. The late 2000s and 2010s saw many pharmaceutical companies and investors abandon or severely deprioritize cardiology research and development in favor of oncology, immunology, and neurology.

During this episode of The Life Science Report, Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel of Back Bay Life Science Advisors discuss the major players in the industry and novel approaches to future cardiology applications.

Episode topics include:

• Why pharma’s interest in specialty-like approaches has shifted towards cardiology
• The promise of “advanced modalities” and gene therapies, such as antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) and small interfering RNA (siRNA)
• How these newer treatments stack up against traditional small molecule orals, like statins
• Clinical stage pipeline analysis across cardiology and visible trends on the horizon

This is the 20th episode of Back Bay’s podcast, covering all facets of healthcare development and transactions. For questions, be in touch: www.bblsa.com