In This Issue:

• Off to a Fabulous Start for 2018
• Go Luke! Luke Timmerman Is Hiking to the Top of Mt. Everest for Cancer Research
• Novateur Client AIT Therapeutics Announces $9.82 Million Private Placement
• Novateur Client Innovative Targeting Solutions Announces Research Agreement With Lilly

Featured Events:

• Seattle Cancer Summit (Top Global IO CEOs & Investors Meeting)
• Boston Cancer Summit (Top Global IO CEOs & Investors Meeting)
• 20th Annual LifeSciences BC Awards Dinner
• BIO International Convention 2018

Attending both JP Morgan Conference in January and BIO CEO & Investor Conference in February confirmed several key points:

• 2018 will see more licensing deals, M&As, financing & IPOs
• Pharma will start coming back to look at large target areas and traditional blockbusters
• FDA is more industry friendly than before

When I found out Luke Timmerman is raising funds for cancer research by hiking the tallest mountain in the world, admittedly I was both excited and jealous!

Join Luke Timmerman on his quest to the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world, to support cancer research at Fred Hutch.

Also check out the Long Run Podcast: this short summary of the show makes the same basic analogy you do about drug discovery being like an endurance sport, and requiring a mental toughness and resilience. 

April 19, 2018 — Vancouver, BC

June 4-7, 2018 — Boston, MA

As part of supporting Luke’s quest to conquer Mt. Everest, Novateur (together with Sanofi, 10X Genomics, Takeda, 5AM Ventures, Sofinnova, Arch, EBD, Alnylam and Loncar) was proud to co-sponsor two top tiered industry/venture capital Immuno-Oncology conferences with a roster of “A-List Speakers”. 

Atendees were able to meet "The Who Is Who" of the global Immuno-Oncology landscape (biotech CEOs, large pharmas and VCs) at two meetings in Seattle (March 5th) or Boston (March 7th). Speakers included the head of Oncology and Immuno-Oncology of most major pharma, and CEO of top Immuno-oncology companies including Sunil Agarwal, President of Juno.

For a full list of speakers click below. 
These meetings were sold out!

February 12-13, 2018 — New York, NY

"Novateur engaged the appropriate thought leaders and helped us understand the market and its challenges and the appropriate path through development that would support the positioning of our asset to allow us to capture value and was invaluable to our decision making process.
More than anything, Novateur has taught us that being first-in-class is not enough and that you need to have a well thought out plan to execute on."

"The Novateur Ventures’ team guided us to the next level, bringing knowledge, experience and credibility to our team. Simply put, it was like having a world class scientific advisory board, BD team, drug development team simultaneously!"

"Novateur team were able to help us address a number of critical commercial and regulatory issues facing one of our start-up companies working in the cell therapy field. Novateur delivered actionable recommendations that allowed us to deliver a clear and complete business plan to potential investors."

The challenges facing the life sciences sector are well documented, even if there is some debate about which ones are most urgent. From cost and pricing pressures to regulatory compliance, the barriers to success can be significant.

As a result, the mantra “fail it fast” has become a truism. The journey to commercialization is long and expensive; if something isn’t going to succeed, it’s better to know early so that scientists and investors can move on to the next project.

But what about innovations that fail because the teams behind them were missing critical knowledge? How many promising products would live to see the market if their journey was guided by experts who had travelled the route before?