Episode 41: BIO 2024 WrapUp - Key Takeaways + Trends in Biotech with Key Opinion Leaders Elaine Hamm and James Zanewicz

At BIO 2024, key topics were women's health, AI in healthcare, and so much more.

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That's a little something extra. Hello and welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm Dr. Elaine Hamm, the executive in residence at Tulane University School of Medicine.

And I'm James Zanewicz, the chief strategy officer at Tulane School of Medicine. Just recently, we attended the BIO International Conference, and it was successful in many different ways this year. Over the top, crazy, all the things.

Elaine and I wanted to come together and chat Yeah, I thought we'd talk about a little bit of our key takeaways from our time at BIO, other than the fact that we made probably too many meetings, I might say. Um, but also what we look forward to in terms of the future of the conference and the biotech industry.

So. No, I agree, Elaine. And so one of the big trends I think we saw was women's health. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Because like you had a company, you were pitching science, you had all the things, and I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Yeah, you know, this is, it's, it's a big topic. As a woman.

And that, you know, I left that out.

Yeah, it's been a struggle just in general in terms of finding things in women's and health, you know, women's health. I mean, just from my own health perspective, I was diagnosed many years ago with endometriosis. The diagnosis, by the way, came through surgery, not an actual diagnostic kit or anything like that. Since that moment, I really wanted to find things that were in the women's health area. And so when I was looking to start a new company and look for new assets, I very much had been scouring the landscape for many years and found nothing. And a lot of that has to do with the aspect that there's not a lot of basic research funding in women's health. And I think that has started to change a little bit. But really excitingly, I think this past BIO has really illuminated the fact that more pharma companies and diagnostic companies are understanding the potential in women's health from a market perspective, from a patient perspective. And so we kind of saw a little bit with Organon. Joining the fray several years ago. But this year, women's health was one of the most talked about topics, one of the most requested assets. I myself am developing an endometriosis drug with my co-founder Carol Curtis in our company Cadenza Bio. And we had so many meetings. And it wasn't just a specific conversation around an asset. It was really around the topic of and the potential of women's health and the many different aspects that we could address. Also included in that conversation was around a lot of things that we have as a specialty at Thule, which is sex-based medicine. And so that's, we're also understanding as an industry that you can't just test your drugs on white men. You also have to diversify unless that's what your product is designed for. That's fine. But if you want to, if you want your product to go into a diverse patient population, you're going to have to test in a diverse patient population. And we are, we have for many years realized the impact of sex-based differences as it relates to medicine.

Yeah. And I think the fascinating thing for me was Dr. Hedwynn Brooks, our chair of physiology, coming both last year in BIO 2023 and this year in BIO 2024, And watching her in the room as a true scientific expert who studies menopause and aging in women and how the body changes and collaborates around cardiovascular issues and renal issues and other things in that space, but also just sex-based biology in general. She was an interesting novelty to have as part of the conversation. They were intrigued, but not quite sure why we had her there. And this year she was the star of the show. Conversations could have gone far more than the half hour we had for each meeting just talking to her about these issues.

And I thought that was really incredible that in In my conversations with Hedwynne around the subject of menopause, you know, menopause has been primarily thought of as like, oh, hot flashes, the end. That's the main symptom. And that's a lot of what the primary endpoints are in drug development. But menopause is so much more. And talking to her and her research, understanding sort of the broad sense of symptoms that you see in menopause and as we decrease in estrogen, has a dramatic impact across a lot of different aspects of women's health. And I think that conversation is finally being held, which is fantastic. So yeah.

And in addition to that, we also had conversations about Françoise Mavey-Jarvis and Tonette Crossell-Woods' new COBRA Center around sex-based biology stemming off of a smaller center we had in that originally. And Elaine, you had your own company in this space that there was a tremendous amount of interest in. I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit as well.

Yes, with Cadenza Health. You know, actually, we started the company around an asset around MS. And then we found as we were digging through the researcher's portfolio, they also had something in endometriosis. It hadn't gotten very far because there wasn't any research funding and research dollars in the field of endometriosis and women's health. But we really wanted to pursue this. And so we've gotten a ton of requests for meetings at BIO around endometriosis. There's a lot of great collaboration potential as well as we talk to people in the diagnostic perspective. So that's a key aspect as it relates to endometriosis. The other piece, and I don't know if this is one, a better understanding around women's health, a better appreciation of the market potential around women's health, or if it's just because we also have a lot more women in leadership positions that are in a position to where they can actually pursue these, these diagnostics and these therapeutics and these line, this line of research. And so we had a lot of meeting with women leadership in pharmaceutical companies, and I thought that was a Probably makes a big difference. I mean, we had a lot of our time spent in some of my other meetings explaining, you know, what endometriosis was. And there are a lot of people that just had no idea. And then now it's a big difference this year where we have women in the room, they understand it, and they understand the problem, the potential. So it's probably multifactorial as to why we're seeing this sort of increase. Yeah.

And for anyone interested in this space, we did just re-release our— I think it was our top podcast episode ever with Hedwen Brooks on sex-based biology and sex differences. And also coming up, we'll re-release our podcast with Franco Maio Jarvis about his center. It's now at COBRE. We'll have to have him back on and talk about his plans going forward. But those are really great ways to get an intro into the space. I think now maybe we should segue to one of your and my favorite topics, AI and healthcare. And that also this year— last year also kind of a novelty. And this year, was there anything without AI on their pitch deck, Elaine?

I mean, it was hard, which is a little bit of the problem too, is that you see this, you know, Follow the money kind of mentality of like, oh, people are really interested in AI. Let's put that into our pitch deck and let's really think about adding an AI piece to our company. And it's hard to tell in that fray of like who's really working on something novel and new and innovative as it relates to AI from a tool perspective.

Who used spellcheck and called it AI because it is.

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. It's just like, that's just data analysis. I think we're going to see that kind of decrease. I mean, you're really starting to see the real leaders within AI emerge in the space. And I also think that there's a bit of a different perspective that is beginning to emerge around that AI is really a tool versus it being this entire industry in and of itself as it relates to biotech. AI is a tool that we can utilize across a number of different facets of healthcare. And when we think of it as a tool, I think that puts it in a different light.

Yeah, and I think a lot of what I heard too is that beyond tool, it's almost like a junior colleague is the way to leverage AI and to use it as a thing. Because robot overlord's lane, remember, you want them to like you, humanize it. But we started off with a great panel at the Biotechnology Transfer Committee, which is their one committee that exists at the intersection of industry and academia. And it was really interesting to have you there speaking on that panel and Sarah Benson-Conforti of PeptiCom and also a venture capitalist in her own right, and Ham Lim of Deep Cure. And I thought y'all had some really great insights and wasn't sure if you wanted to talk about any of those bits. And also then the AI panel that you oversaw during Bioproper.

Yeah, so I think that first panel, I mean, actually, one of the takeaways was that we need to think of it as a tool and that it could be a tool for many different aspects of healthcare. One piece I thought was interesting is sort of like we have a very narrow sometimes view of like how we utilize AI in drug discovery and drug development, and that it's not just about using AI to discover new targets and to design new drugs. It can also be more subtle and again, more tool-like, where it's helping us understand how we can better recruit patients for our clinical trials. How do we stratify them a little bit differently such that we might have a better efficacy for our drug, that type of thing. So there's a lot of subtle uses of AI as we think about drug development specifically. And that was one of the bigger takeaways. That I took away from our first conversation. And then, yeah, we had an AI panel sponsored by the AIH on the topic of AI and regulatory innovation. And it was a really interesting panel because we, rather than just sort of questions and answers in that type of format, we actually went through with the framework of a SWOT. So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as it relates to AI and regulatory innovation. And I think that was A very sort of illuminating conversation because it was a very transparent one. A lot of times when you talk about AI, it's very, it's full of hype and a lot of flowery language and, and a lot of excitement, which I totally understand. But there's still a lot of weaknesses. There's still a lot of gaps in our knowledge and things that we need to do better in order to use AI more successfully. And so that was a really thoughtful conversation around the topic of AI. And we're actually going to be publishing the results of that conversation as an actual SWOT on our website in the next 2 weeks. And that's the aaih.org is the name of the website.

Oh, that's fantastic. I did not even know that, which probably means I didn't read an email you sent me. Sorry. I'm excited for that. I can't wait to read it.

It's so, it's so nerdy to say that it was fun, but it's really, I love a good SWOT and I really, I love the transparency and understanding like, nope, still a lot of challenges. Let's, let's roll up our sleeves and fix it.

Speaking of challenges, investment, moving on to our next topic, venture capital investment. Everyone's looking for it, whether you have AI or not. There are some trends this year that we heard from venture capital. What were some of the things that you heard?

You know, I mean, I wouldn't say necessarily BIO is a huge conference for raising money and investors to attend. There's a lot of investors and venture capitalists looking at that conference, but I would say that's probably more focused on the partnering side, but there were still quite a few in the mix and had a lot of good conversations. We're looking to raise for our MS endometriosis company next year. So we're starting to have those conversations now. It's always good to talk to people before you actually need money. So we're starting to have those soft conversations and it feels a little more, I don't know, optimistic.

Mm-hmm.

To be honest, there's a little less concern around their own portfolio. So what we saw last year and several years prior was a pretty risk-averse group. People were wanting to double down on their portfolio versus taking new investment. And I think that there's been a bit of a shift, but I also think that pharma is also looking to do more in the space in terms of partnership and partnering earlier, you know, not just waiting till a phase 2 result comes out, And I think that's also probably feeding into this more optimistic viewpoint as it relates to partnerships and licensing acquisitions and investments.

So yeah, probably also leading into what I feel like I saw and heard, and some of this hits on our next topics, which are side events. But what I heard at those is that VCs are looking for exits and not IPOs. They don't want to wait. And maybe that earlier partnering from pharma is driving that as well.

Yeah, exits seem to be a little bit more on the topics versus the IPOs, which is interesting. So. We'll see how that plays out though. I'm gonna switch this around to you actually.

Ooh.

My next question is for you. So you did BIO a little bit differently. Normally when you and I attend BIO, we set up a billion meetings and partnering and then go to all the receptions that we possibly can. Lather, rinse, repeat Monday through Thursday. And we still did that, but On Wednesday, you did something a little different, and I'd love to hear what you did and what your thoughts were.

And on Tuesday morning when I got up super early, which everyone thought was crazy. So there are 2 things I want to talk about because it was almost the year of the side hustle at BIO, which we haven't seen before. It became a little more JPM-like where you had other things going on. The first one I want to talk about is Ticket to Biotech, and that is by Linnea Olivares, who I was fortunate to meet at the Fierce Pharma MPR Summit West earlier this year. And she has done a whole group where the comms and marketing people around biotech were able to gather together at any point from 7 to 10 AM. So I was there from 7 to 8 before we hit into our meeting starting at 8:30, 9 o'clock in the morning. Carolyn Schofield on the team came out, was able to hit more of the, the 8:30 to 9 to 10 o'clock block. But it was really fascinating to have the communicators who are out there trying to explain what companies are doing both to potential customers, to investors. The comms and brand is so present in everything, but it was a really neat new side event that I think added a lot. And even though it was a small group, it was a really— a group that you don't get to see at BIO otherwise. So I loved that. But then my Wednesday, which you referenced, was spent all day at the bullpen. The bullpen went from Sunday to Wednesday. Wednesday was the one day I begged you all to take all the meetings and let me go and You agreed before we had so many meetings that you probably regretted it at the end. Like, I did not know we'd have 130 meetings when we agreed to that.

But— I might have— had I known that we had 130 meetings, I might have said a different answer.

But no one knew. But anyway, this is a really great group which is focused on CEOs, super high C-suite, key opinion leaders, and venture capital only. It's an invite-only club that comes together in really cool side events. It's all about finding someone, helping them, and repeating. And I was fortunate to be invited by the bullpen to interview key opinion leaders all day. So while you guys were in meetings switching every half hour, I was sitting on stage with lights and gorgeous expensive cars behind me, 'cause it was at a really cool place called the Garage Collective, getting to interview some of the top minds in AI and healthcare. And I got a whole like 15 minutes off to shove a chicken sandwich in my mouth and then get back on stage. It was super fun. And I'm looking forward to all that content from LinkedIn dropping and then a great reception to end the day. And the nice thing is, you know, Bullpen might be coming to BIO on the Bayou as well in the BIO Challenge. And we're super excited to welcome Christian and his team back down to the Gulf South and to do Bullpen in our way, which will be a little different.

Yeah, love that. Well, so are there any sneak peeks or takeaways that you can hint at? You know, one of your favorite takeaways from your interviews on Wednesday?

Oh my gosh, so much stuff. I did feel like, again, this all leads into the— it was the year of AI in healthcare. There was an AI in healthcare Day at JPM, and it was really good. And Tulane sponsored that day, as we did at the Bullpen for BIO. And it was— the conversations were deeper, they were more insightful, there were a lot more people interested, and it felt a lot more real in many ways.

Yeah.

Where JPM was sort of the— last year was kind of like the pre-show, JPM was the lead-up, and this year it took center stage and just really enjoyed being part of that.

Yeah, it's fantastic to see AI take a real place in BIO. For sure.

As we referenced, you probably wanted to kill me when Wednesday hit and you were doing all the meetings. But I was like, hey, bye, guys. I'm going to go hang out at the really cool place with food trucks, and I'll see you later. But partnering exploded this year. It was crazy how many meetings there were, and you were in a lot of them. So I wondered if you could talk a bit about that, both from your Tulane hat and your CEO hat, because you were there in 2 ways.

Oh, in multiple ways, because also the AIH.

Oh, that's right.

It was the most crowded I think I've seen it in a really long time. I think that, I mean, it felt more packed. It felt like there was a lot more energy. And in terms of the meetings, I mean, again, I think that there's a little bit of shift in pharma looking for assets and looking to do more partnering. That was the feel I got from it this year versus last year. As it relates to Tulane, I think there was a lot of interest around really understanding mechanisms More on the basic research side, but in a more thoughtful way of making sure that we take into consideration sex-based medicine and that type of thing.

Mm-hmm.

I think as it relates to Tulane's research, I think that there's an interest to better understanding aspects of research. So versus just, here's an asset, let's do a drug trial and move forward. It's a little more thoughtful and they're seeing the value of plugging in researchers at an early stage as a KOL. And I think that was a big difference. Especially when we talk about things that Tulane is an expert in, in terms of sex-based medicine and fertility and that type of thing. They had a lot of great questions around that versus being so asset-focused, which I thought was really great.

Kind of playing off what you said, Elaine, I think the other really interesting thing was it was almost a year of, in addition to looking at assets, and I know we were in a room with one company together where they're like, why have you never told us about this? And I'm like, well, you're interested in it this year because I think we have for like the last 3 years. But yay, which we didn't say. We're like, we don't know. We just didn't think about it. But, you know, it's, it was great to see something hit, but also it was the interesting year of KOLs and key opinion leaders and promoting people like Shane Tubbs, who's our editor-in-chief of Grey's Anatomy and has tremendous potential to help advise companies on where to place devices or things in bodies, things that are delivering devices for optimization, or Dr. Suresh Sikka, who's the go-to person for figuring out, and I'm sorry to say this, but for male fertility and do drugs affect that. You need that to make more women, so that's important as well. And it all gets back to women's health eventually, right? But things like that were interesting. That was a broader perspective of conversations.

Absolutely. Well, and I mean, when we talk about fertility, to be honest, we often leave men out of that conversation. And that's not necessarily a good thing either. I mean, you have to have the balance. You have to have diversity. It takes two, right? When we talk about fertility and male fertility is often not talked about.

It's often the problem. And they don't figure that out until, until, until, well, and honestly, until you investigate what's going on with the women so much that they're like, nope, it's not you. You're fine. Now let's try your partner, which is crazy.

Yeah. And something a little bit beyond just sort of the basic parameters that we've seen in the past as it relates to fertility. So it's interesting to see that really take hold in terms of how we can use this information to do medicine better.

Well, and Dr. Ham, since you are a scientist, which is why I'm saying the doctor, just to clarify that for this question, you're like, am I in trouble? I'm like, no, not at all.

Yeah, exactly.

What were the trends in science you saw this year? Because every year there are hot areas. We've talked about women's health, we've talked about AI, but what are some of the other areas that you saw that were areas of huge interest to BIO?

You know, that's a good question. I honestly, the women's health and AI were what I think were the top takeaways. I think there is a little bit more emphasis on diagnostics and personalized medicine. And then I think you have the same players that we've always had in terms of oncology and interest in INI and that type of area. Lots of movement in terms of the neuro space, I think. I mean, there were a lot of deals announced during BIO as it relates to ALS and a few other neuro-based assets. And so I think that there's, you know, still movement in that area. Another deal in the hearing loss space, which is also an area that I'm interested in, Shionogi announced a deal with Silkare. They, for a long period of time, had been focused on being the CRO for companies developing hearing loss drugs, but then they actually acquired assets themselves and began developing them. And struck a nice deal with Shionogi about that. And I think, again, that's— it's starting to show that there's interesting niche items that are being explored, and still there's interest. So hearing loss has been a little bit of a challenging industry, huge market, huge need, but challenging because there's not a lot of options out there, and it's a very difficult indication. And so I'm still seeing some more movement in that area. So that's good news.

Well, I think when we first thought about doing this wrap-up, we're like, will we even have 5 minutes of content? And obviously, that was a lot to go over. We probably have even more that we could about, but we probably have hit on enough today. And so—

I could definitely talk more. Yeah. But yeah, it's just, it was a really great sort of energetic BIO, to be honest. I think that was my biggest takeaway. A lot more people this year, a lot more people looking to do deals and take more risk. And that to me is really exciting. And I think that people are understanding to see universities beyond this very pigeonholed viewpoint of Universities, we can license assets from them. Universities can be so much more in terms of a partnership of how we do healthcare. Everything from the assets, yes, which that's pretty standard, but, you know, patient population that maybe we've been doing research on and have biomarker data and that might be able to test your drug against, understanding the clinical trial piece that, you know, academic medicine centers bring to the table. KOL piece, I think, is another big one.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's really exciting to see a more holistic Absolutely.

And so do you think it was worth it?

Definitely. If you had asked me Thursday night when I had almost lost my voice and had many blisters on my feet, I might've had a different answer to you. But no, honestly, I think it was really exciting to see a little bit more energy in this space and a little bit more innovation, to be honest. I mean, I felt like it was why I got into bio, which is risk-taking and solving hard problems and with the goal of helping people. And that was my theme for the week. What about you?

I think the same. And I think the kind of pinnacle of this for me was one I should have talked about in side events, and I didn't, is BIO From the Bayou, our industry event at BIO that carries our name, which is the Louisiana Coalition and the Alliance for AI in Healthcare coming together. But we went from, I think, 150 people in the room last year to over 400 this year. We had allocated 400 slots, and we kept letting people in as ebb and flow happened. And so we have a stack of cards. We haven't itemized yet, but like, it was just crazy. And the podcast downloads from that, because we had the podcasts everywhere, we had almost 200 podcast downloads that night alone, which was great just to see people listening to what we had to say on Bio from the Bayou at Bio from the Bayou, which was fun.

Yeah, and honestly, it was a good reminder that we have another conference coming up, and that is occurring— that is occurring soon, and it's a really exciting opportunity to again, engage in research and solving hard problems, but in a little bit of a different part of the world, and that is the Gulf South region. And I think there's just so many opportunities that when you come to BIO on the Bayou, you uncover in terms of collaboration, in terms of startups, assets, scientific research. There's a lot of activity occurring here, and it's a really great way to showcase it.

Yeah. And again, for everyone, that is bioonthebayou.com, not biofromthebayou like the podcast. They sound the same, but they're different. And that is Very Gulf South regional. It's a whole bunch of states from the Gulf South and the territory of Puerto Rico coming together to highlight science coming out of academia, plus startups from or connected to the Gulf South in some way. It is October 29th and 30th of this year. It is being followed by the return of the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center's BioChallenge. They actually have, I believe, a $150,000 first prize of— I think it's $100,000 in cash and $50,000 in kind. Something like that. It's all around some barda-themed initiatives, and we'll have a link for that in our show notes as well. Really cool stuff. And then the Bullpen is going to layer on top of both. And the things we're looking at for the Bullpen reception are going to be super fun. We had a little brainstorming today that Elaine doesn't even know about yet, and I can't wait to tell her. But, you know, we'll have informational links for that in our show notes. But registration is now open for that. Hotel rooms are now up for our blocks. Go to bioonthebayou.com, register. No cost to register. We're going to make sure you're going to come closer to the end. We'll kick you out if you say you're not coming. But we do want to make it as accessible to people in the Gulf South as possible. And we do keep it at a couple hundred people, so it will cap out at some point. We do really want to highlight the science and the startups from or connected to the Gulf South.

Yeah, and it's a fun event. I mean, it's panels, it's in-depth conversations, it's pitches that are short, sweet, and to the point, which I love. You know, you really get the breadth and depth that I think is really key. But also, it happens to be Halloween in New Orleans, which to me is a really fantastic reason to stay a little bit extra afterwards too.

Exactly. And we do have those room blocks extended slightly so people can do that or come early if they want. You can make a whole week of our city.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, this is—

well, anything else, James?

No, I think this has been great. I think the important thing to wrap up is we hit on the Year of Women's Health and AI in healthcare, that VCs are definitely open for business. The businesses they're looking for might be those kind of quick exits and not the IPOs, although there are still some people probably in that space. The side hustles, the side events, Bullpen, Ticket to Biotech, Bio from the Bayou were incredible and exploding along with partnering, which was just insane this year with our record number of meetings. And that was in large part thanks to Alexis Takodi and Eric Malamud on our team. We can't take credit for that. We can take credit for hiring them and that's about it. But that was pretty awesome. And just, you know, the trends in science going forward, it was just It's crazy and amazing to see, and we can't wait to see everyone here for BIO on the Bayou. Did I do a good job? Am I hired?

Yes, I will extend your contract for sure.

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