Episode 1: Biotech Partnering Meetings with Key Opinion Leaders James Zanewicz and Patrick Reed

You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, featuring stories and industry insights from experts in the bustling biotech scene of New Orleans.

The entire Gulf Coast region is buzzing with expertise and excitement. We're here to bring you frontline access to this vibrant ecosystem direct from NOLA, the city that provides a little lagniappe with everything we do.

Where people come for the science and stay for the food, festivals, and resilient culture. I'm Patrick Reed at LSU Health.

And I'm James Zanewicz from Tulane University. Today, we are both host and guest as we explore the world of business development and partnering meetings.

So you've been doing business development for a long time, James, obviously my mentor in a lot of these activities. Business development, it's not something you normally see done in academia the way you do at Tulane. Tell us about why you do it, how you do it.

As most people who know me are aware, I, I tend to move towards things where we can push the envelope and do something a little differently than it had been done before. After a long career in tech transfer, I was trying to figure out what was next. And I saw the world of business development and partnering in the corporate world and the way they did that with a very intentional aspect on providing value to each other, figuring out what kind of value you could provide to your external partner that would bring you value at the same time. And I wanted to bring that into the academic realm. When I saw the job posting, I ignored the requirements they had. Realized that my vision was something that could bring a lot of value to my alma mater of Tulane, and came in and pitched them on that, and they liked it and went with it. So the way we started it was coming in and really sitting and getting to know first what our product was at Tulane. And our product is more than just inventions and more than just research. It is key opinion leaders. It's clinical patient populations. It is expertise in training people in skills they may not already have. It's providing students and workforce. All those kinds of things. And that is where I think we've been able to add a lot of value is by approaching folks, taking meetings, and first of all, being very intentional about understanding what they need, and then making sure that what we're putting in front of them matches that so we're not wasting their time.

I think it's interesting. Obviously, you know, I've been in academic tech transfer for 20 years, and that's been my near primary focus. And it's only been the past few years that I got involved in business development. And the way I always think about it is tech transfer. It's wonderful. Obviously, we all know we need to do it. We like the profession. It's important and it gets things to the public for their benefit. But to me, it always kind of felt like a passive activity. You go out and you solicit invention disclosures and you do that sort of thing, but you're really at the mercy of inventors actually inventing something and bringing it to you and disclosing it, and then evaluation, marketing protection, etc. But this, I think the business development function is more operating at the top of the funnel. When you're talking about these other skill sets and value adds that you can bring to the institution, bringing in external partners at the get-go, getting faculty to think about more translational aspects of their research, putting them together, partnering them with a company early on so they say they actually stop and think, well, what are the future ramifications of this research project? Are there other aspects of it that I haven't thought about because I've only been focused on the fundamental aspects of the science? So I think that's one of the ways that I approach business development at LSU Health.

Yeah, absolutely agree, Patrick. And I think you— as you and I were both on a recent panel entitled Death of the TTO, or Death of the Tech Transfer Office—

Very controversial.

It was. And, you know, as we often are, I think the point we're getting across there is that in the '90s and even the early aughts, tech transfer was You get something, you patent it, you wait for someone to come to you to license it. Maybe if you were really, really creative, you marketed it a little bit. And what you and I have both been able to do is kind of flip that on its head. And I actually do think that traditional tech transfer has died in a way, and that what we are doing is the tech transfer 2.0. It's knowledge transfer. It's what it's called around the globe in a sense, where you're not just focused on only on commercialization, but everything else that feeds into that commercialization pipeline. And if you do all those other things, Your commercial activities are far better positioned down the line because you have those connections.

And I think it's important to note that, of course, other institutions have done this. They've done this in the past. This has been an activity. I mean, yes, people take the time to try to bring industry or other external partners onto campus and get them involved in various different ways. But I think this is a more intentional way to bring companies and other external partners on campus to get them involved in every aspect, like you were saying earlier. Sourcing key opinion leaders, getting them in front of our students, helping them, getting them connected with our investigators and collaborating on research.

Well, given that, so, you know, I was fortunate that when I really chose to do this, I was able to come into a new job and convince them that my vision was the way we should start from scratch. But you actually were in a job that was a more traditional tech transfer job, even though you were doing some of these bits and pieces in an elevated way, and you had to go convince your leadership to allow you to do things like these. And to give you the budget to do that, which obviously is different because you have to be able to travel, you have to be able to lay out some expense to get that return. How did you do that?

Shamelessly, I stole from you a lot, obviously. I pointed to a lot of Tulane successes and what they were doing. We had naturally partnered together locally here in New Orleans, and that was going well. And I think telling that story that, again, the top of the funnel metaphor where I'm trying to bring in additional research dollars, not just licensing revenue, I think resonated really well. So trying to grow the research base, trying to find alternative funding sources for my investigators in this time where federal dollars are a lot more difficult to go after, I think it resonated at the time. And I have to credit my leadership for allowing me the latitude to undertake this. So you and I go to a lot of our meetings together. Tulane is a bit of a larger institution. You go to more meetings than I do. How do you approach your company meetings?

As I sort of referenced before, but in reality, it is a lot of front-end homework. It's almost going back to school before you even make your meeting ask. It's figuring out what the value you can bring to that partner is, which is understanding what their needs are. And that is more than just sourcing an invention into their company, as we've talked about. It can be, do they have areas where you have key opinion leaders where a half hour on the phone could be beneficial? It could be, are they looking to hire folks in areas? Do you have specialized equipment? Are they in clinical trials? And are you in an area much like New Orleans where you have a really diverse patient population? And working in that realm can be really helpful. Doing your homework in that way, but also presenting information in the way they want to receive it. The days of the one-page slick are over and dead.

They're gone.

People want that 5 to 7 page pitch deck. They want you to lay out Here's what we have. They don't want market research behind it. They have people who do that. They want you to dig into why it's good for them, how it fits in their pipeline, and what the science is, and be able to convey that as quickly as possible. And we've spent a lot of time in our shop honing, refining that, working with amazing industry leaders like Gayatri Varma, Sharon Simones, Kirsten Leute, across the board, right? Getting lots of feedback. Having them look at things, refining on back down, and figuring out what that best way across the board is to present the information. It's not always perfect, but it's a lot better, and people are really appreciative. Actually, the first meeting I did where I did that, I was told it was the most prepared a university had ever been walking into a meeting, and that was with Novo Nordisk.

Well, and they've got a lot of noise, right? I mean, when they go to a meeting like BIO or BIO Network or what have you, they're meeting with hundreds of people. When they're not at these partnering events, they're getting thousands of emails. So you've got to do some background so that you can stand out from that noise.

Absolutely. It all comes down to time, I think. Are you able to save them time? And if you can save them time, they'll spend more time on what you send them.

Right, right.

You and I knew each other before I came here. Obviously, in addition to becoming close colleagues, we became very close friends in the process. And that led us to you suggesting we start taking meetings together instead of separately. So what brought that about and what value do you see in doing that for external companies? You're exactly right.

And I think that's one of the most powerful things that we do. I think especially because of the region we're in. Obviously we live in a smaller ecosystem. New Orleans is not large. We do have a lot of universities. We're all relatively small. So a win for one is a win for all of us. If one of us can attract a large industry partner funder down here, we're going to provide access and introductions to all the others in our tight-knit group. And so I think, number one, it's beneficial for us to do this together. We have more assets to share. Our research areas of strength, at least between the two of us, are more complementary than they are competitive. So that has always made sense. And I think honestly, and we've gotten the feedback when we've gone to these meetings, companies love it. They get to kill two birds with one stone. And we also sometimes bring one of our local economic development representatives with us so they can talk about other assets that the city might have. And I think it's been received well and it's powerful that way.

No, I agree. And I just want to say from my perspective, as someone partnering with you as well, and for folks who are out there considering how to partner, it does make it easier because partnering is hard. It's grueling and exhausting. Occasionally you and I are brain dead in the same meeting, but usually one of us can pick up for the other. Right. And on your 4th day of bio, after you're on meeting 108, It's good to have that colleague who is really there to pick you up. And it's also good, I think, to have multiple institutions that you can do that with because people find value in that. Because again, as we talked about earlier, how can you save them time? It's one time slot instead of 2.

Yep.

And you're more likely to get that meeting. And we found that because we went from, I believe the year before we had partnered with you, I want to say we had 70, 75 meetings. We went to 110. The year we started doing it with you.

It was a lot of meetings, and they were great. You take a lot of meetings with investors. Why is that? How do you make it work as an academic medical center?

Yeah, it's interesting, and people ask me that a lot. How and why do I get meetings with people who are in the investment realm? That's because we, again, focus on that relationship and value we can bring to them. We don't have a tremendous startup pipeline yet. We're really working on building that. Our new Innovation Institute is launching this summer, which is hopefully going to change the face of that for New Orleans and spin out more and more biotech healthcare and tech and other kinds of companies. But when you talk to investors, it's looking at the companies they've already invested in. Are there assets you could bring to bear? All the things we've talked about, key opinion leaders, all those kinds of things. It could also be offering folks as board members or scientific advisors. But when we approached it in that bent, we found investors started asking for meetings with us, which is really unusual for academic centres, unless you're a Stanford, an MIT, a Harvard. We're tremendous institutions down here, but let's face it, we are not in Boston or San Francisco or San Diego or any of the areas traditionally thought of as hotspots. I think we've changed that. And we're also fortunate that we're in a city people like to visit.

I think that's a, a really smart move. So you're not necessarily meeting with these folks, asking 'em for money, invest in our startup companies. You're actually pitching to them what you could bring for their portfolio companies. That's interesting.

With that, I think as we alluded to a little bit ago, the events you have in your hometown, those are tremendous opportunities to engage those folks as well. In your town, in your ecosystem, you have anything that is a tourist engagement event, it's a great opportunity to talk to those people about that. Because in addition to the science, they want to get to know you as people. They want to get to know your city, your area, what it would be like to spend time there. In New Orleans, we're fortunate to have that. And we're throwing events like Bio on the Bayou. What we used to have is our immersion days. That was the precursor to Bio on the Bayou, where we partnered with others. How you can pull those people in to be part of panels, part of expertise, and engage them in giving back in a way that doesn't cost them any money is a tremendous opportunity for partnering as well.

And it certainly doesn't help that we try to schedule a lot of those events around other activities happening around the city, like French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest, et cetera.

Absolutely. I mean, it's hard to find a time in New Orleans where there's not a festival, right?

That's right.

So, you know, sticking with Bio on the Bayou, our signature event in New Orleans, which we're bringing back in the fall of 2022, While we're talking a lot about formal partnering, again, there's also informal partnering that happens at events like that where you don't have that partnering system. You may have the ability, and we use an app that allows folks to contact each other and set meetings while we don't set up special places. And I think finding some way to enable that partnering is a tremendous value. And in addition to that, we've done other things pre and post to engage the community with some select scientists and leadership. And Patrick, I don't know if you want to talk about how we set up some of those breakfasts and dinners and things like that.

Well, and I think a lot of the folks listening would say, well, that's just called networking.

Well, sure.

And that is how you do that informal partnering. But what we're doing is actually creating the space, the venue, the activity to allow that networking to happen. And I think that the way we do Bio on the Bayou is Tulane, LSU Health will provide a group of investigators in a few research areas. That is what we use as the attractor to get these external partners down to come talk to us. And then when we have everyone together, that networking really goes through. And I think that is that informal partnering.

We talked a lot about the value of networking with companies and with investors and with foundations who come to these events. But as we look at our new spin, our Bio on the Bayou 2.0 that we're going to do this year, we're going to invite more of our colleagues throughout the Gulf South to come to New Orleans and partner with us. In presenting, it's those connections between the academy, between the institutions and new research collaborations, which often lead to new ideas. Exactly.

No, and I think that that's going to be even more powerful. And we both know many Tulane and LSU Health investigators work together frequently, but right, pulling in other folks from our region, I think will be fantastic.

So Patrick, is this a secret or do we share this with other people?

I think we share it with other people.

Well, I guess we just did a podcast on it, right?

We did.

Yeah. If people want to know more, how can they get ahold of us?

You check out the show notes for our contact info and stay tuned. Our signature annual biotech showcase event, which we've talked about several times during the podcast, BIO on the Bayou, will return this fall.

Our goal with BIO on the Bayou 2022 is to elevate the academic-industry partnering game once again and kind of hit that level 2.0. So if you're in the Gulf South region and want to learn how to be part, use those show notes to get in touch.

Thanks for joining us for the first episode of Bio from the Bayou.

And we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again.

If you'd like to learn more about the emerging biotech scene in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, visit us at biofromthebayou.com, where we have more info on who we are, how to get involved and connected in biotech in New Orleans, And the industry events we'll be hosting where you can meet with us in person.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't give a special thanks to the Accelerator Network for providing funding for this podcast. Learn more about them in our show notes.

We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.