Episode 60: The Bio on the Bayou 2024 Wrap-Up – Biotech, Networking, and Key Opinion Leaders

From pitches to partners, bullpen to biochallenges, and sticky floors to masquerade balls.

The 2024 BIO on the Bayou wrap-up. We're exhausted.

But here we go. You're listening to BIO from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes.

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Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans.

Welcome back to BIO from the Bayou. I'm James Zanewicz, the Chief Strategy Officer at Tulane Medicine.

And I'm Dr. Elaine Hamm, the Executive in Residence at Tulane School of Medicine. And James and I just finished running the BIO on the Bayou conference along with our friends from the Gulf South. And we'd love to talk about what we did this past week and the amazing things that came out of this year's event.

And it just ended last night.

And we're so tired.

I get up at midnight and I was already working on 2025 this morning. So there's that.

Oh gosh.

But the reason I had energy to do that is this year we had 324 registrations on the books, several more walk-ins. We had an impressive turnout bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and inventors. The stats I really want to talk about though, we have partnering at this, Partnering One from the EBD Group. 1,242 meeting requests.

Wow.

For our group, 252 confirmed meetings, a testament to our team, our group, our growth. We had like half that last year.

I was gonna say, what was it last year?

Yeah, it was like around 700 meeting requests, I think, and roughly half the confirmed meetings. So it's like, It's cool where we've gotten this.

It's growing. It's happening.

It happened.

It started out as a little dream and now here we are.

And those meeting spaces were overcrowded. There are a lot more meetings that just happen off the books. That's just what happens in partnering. But we always have conversation spaces and everything else where we see all these informal meetings happening all the time. I mean, I know of one that happened between one of our faculty members, Bill Wimley, and a major, major pharma company where they were just like, we're going to catch you after your talk and just sit. That didn't track. So it's one more than I even said.

Wow. That's amazing. I talked to Aziz from Nissan Chemicals and he said he had had with just one meeting, 2 potential technologies from LSU Health to bring back to their group to evaluate.

That's Marcus Brown, who's doing great work over there. Very excited for him and what he's doing.

And that's really a testament to the why we do this, of being able to bring, you know, big names like Nissan and Allianz Co. and a few several others that are wanting to come to New Orleans to learn not just about what Tulane is doing, but what all of our partners are doing. And it's a great opportunity to do so.

We had over 20 universities engaged this year, a whole bunch of startups from the Gulf South.

Oh yeah, that was an exciting piece.

I know you love that.

You're like startup Yeah, I love seeing the startup side. I mean, we've always had startups involved in this, a lot of them from the universities that were participating, but slowly but surely we've had a massive increase in startups being able to pitch and meet with investors and meet with potential acquirers, and that's really exciting to see.

Yeah, and then we also have our panels, which are phenomenal. You stole mine.

I 100% stole yours.

And then my favorite part was we also had podcasts, and someone stole yours, and you tried to complain to me about it, and I was like, how's it feel?

Well, and the podcast piece is really interesting We did that last year. We started doing, you know, as people were coming in, we took that as an opportunity to sit down, grab them, and have a deep conversation about some of the things they're working on. And that's always a fun piece of the BIO on the Bayou conference.

Yeah, and one of my— well, I guess my 2 favorites were the 2 that I did. One was Ben Kromnick of Mercury, and the other was the Queensland group, the Australians, who had so much great information. And they were shocked because I have a previous relationship with Australia, and I know a lot of Australian things like don't stand too tall among the poppies, which I totally butchered in Ian made fun of me of. I was like, don't be tall among flowers. Like, don't stand too tall among the poppies, but you're very close. One of my favorite nuggets was the fact that because that is kind of an Australian way of life, the startup world is competitive, but it's hard for them to come to America where everyone's hypercompetitive, but they're trained not to be as a people. And we had a really interesting conversation on that, so I encourage people to listen to that one when it comes out.

Well, and that's when we think about Bio on the Bayou, you think of just some of the very sort of close, you know, Mississippi, Louisiana, you know, those, those types of states, but it is really expanded in our definition of what the Bayou is because we had people from Australia, we had someone present from the University of Chile. I mean, it's grown.

And we're international.

So yeah, we're at this—

Puerto Rico's America.

I know it's America. Well, I started to say Puerto Rico and then you said international. I was like, ugh, just trying to make me look stupid. It's fine.

I am not. Would never, would never, would never.

That's all right. In addition to startups that are from the Gulf South region, we've also partnered with 2 organizations. It was Equalize, which is an incredible organization that really helps women entrepreneurs to the forefront and provide them training and opportunities. So we had a couple startups from there, and we also had Bullpen. So James, why don't you talk a little bit about Bullpen?

I'm one of the founding members of Bullpen, and I absolutely love it. It is sort of an invite-only club for C-suite and investors. People can apply for membership, but their basic test is, are you about yourself or are you about helping others? Because they're about helping others. And if somebody comes in and says, hey, I don't have time to help other people, I just really want the network, No. They're not money-driven. They are driven by a passion of a community that helps each other out. Their mantra is find someone, help them, repeat.

Yeah.

And it really aligns well, I think, with the entire Bayou on the Bayou community in the Gulf South, because we are scrappier and we do all help each other. We have a resilience much like the Bullpen. So both sides were talking about how it was a perfect fit, and they did a bunch of wraparound events. They did a small opening dinner for some of their members and some of the Bayou on the Bayou folks. They did a really nice tiny investor dinner. And actually, I saw there were a series of investor dinners that happened because of Bullpen members on Tuesday night.

Yeah.

And then on Wednesday, instead of having people over to the house and waking up with sticky floors, we actually had a Bullpen Masquerade Ball, the first annual.

We did.

Super fun at Chouchak's Restaurant. They did a great job, rolled out the red carpet for us. We had a courtyard and inside. We had Corey making us great drinks. The owner, Mark, put out tremendous food for us. We had shrimp and grits.

Yeah, we had shrimp and grits. We had cocktails. We had masks. People dressed up. There were tuxes. People wore shorts. I mean, it was, it was perfect for the world. There were glitter jackets. There were glitter jackets.

Australia brought a glitter jacket, which I loved. Glitter jacket. And they were worried that it was a lot. It's Tuesday here.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it was a really fun way to interweave some of the exciting things that are going on in the startup world and bio. And let's face it, science is hard, startups are hard. And so you need a community of people to help, you know, take an idea to reality in general. And I hate the competitive piece of it. You know, there's one penny on the floor and we're all trying to grab it. Let's instead work together and find—

and make a dollar, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, the other thing that the bullpen brought in was KOL interviews. And a KOL is a key opinion Opinion leader, which I learned we didn't convey enough to people. Like you kept saying to sign up for a KOL interview. We didn't know what a KOL was. I'm like, wow!

They didn't listen to our podcast about KOLs.

Exactly. Clearly, that should have been my response was you clearly don't listen to our podcast.

Check out this episode.

So I guess I should have been offended instead of feeling bad. But but these were a great thing where the bullpen does this, but they do little five-minute videos or even shorter, asking people about their history, who they are. what they're working on that excites them and their passion right now, and then allow them to make one ask of the community of how can the community help you. And for startups, that could be funding, it could be a network. For academics, it could be collaborations. But it's just a really, really cool way. And we'll have those rolling out after the conference this year and got a lot of compliments on that from people. And that is mentioned in our surveys. That was the favorite new addition for several people. Yeah.

Well, in addition to the KLL interviews, we had some great scientists talking about their work. And one thing that I was really pleased to hear was a lot of talks on women's health. I mean, we had Dr. Hedwynn Brooks talking about menopause. which was, I think, a crowd favorite. I mean, I saw all these women in the audience nodding their head and like, oh, that's what is happening. And it was an incredible talk. We had someone talk about preeclampsia. And even Don Davis, who was behind the scenes on the KOL interviews, I pulled him up to the front and we talked a lot about his endometriosis diagnostic. So it was really great to hear that next phase as we think about health and bringing women's health into the forefront.

Yeah. And so the one thing, because we did grow so much, we have so many side events, and they were in so many kind of disparate spaces. We tried to keep them as close as But partnering across the street in Nobik, the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center, tremendous partners for us, who also host one of our receptions. But next year we're going to have a move.

Yes, we are. I'm very excited about the expansion for 2025.

Yeah, to the Jung Hotel. So you can stay, play, and work all in the same place.

All in the same place.

I know, it's going to be great. And I believe we're still going to have our Tuesday night reception at Nobik.

Yes.

And I believe the Bullpen already wants to come back and do their masquerade ball again.

I love that. Also because I love that because that means it's not going to be at the house and I don't have sticky floors to wake up to.

Very, very true. It was nice today, I won't lie. I walked up and like, oh, I'll have to do a few dishes that I haven't done this week. That was very nice.

We saved that for the other folks at the masquerade reception.

So we'll have that expansion. We'll probably have to start charging a little bit, but probably be a few hundred dollars, still keeping it very affordable for the network just because we can't cover an entire venue rental on our own, but we can keep it really affordable. So it won't be $3,000, we can promise people.

Oh my gosh, no.

Not at all. And that's what most of these conferences are. They're $2,000 to $3,000.

Yeah, easily. And so that's what's so frustrating if you're a startup or starting out trying to get your technology off the ground, you don't got any money. So it's, it's really hard to come to conferences. And so we try to keep it really affordable because we want the innovation to be at the forefront and not the people that can afford it, which are not, you know, the bigger players and aren't as scrappy and innovative as the startups.

And I guess we should close out at least with 2 things. One, to thank the New Orleans BioInnovation Center for partnering, but also the BioChallenge pitch competition that happened right after us. That was like, that's happening today.

It's—

the award is probably being given right now, but that's actually a really cool It's a great addition to the Bio on the Bayou week.

Yeah.

It's becoming a week now.

It's becoming a week. And it's the Bio Challenge Pitch Competition. BARDA is going to be there. They're going to be handing out prizes, which is very exciting.

Yeah. And we also should thank the team. I don't know if you can run through all the people because I always leave someone out and I screw up.

Thank goodness for our team. We couldn't have done this. We have, of course, Ian sitting across the table from us. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for all of your help with the podcast. We had Alexis Decote, who was doing our partnering side. Maggie and Carolyn, of course. Carolyn helped on the KOL interviews. Of course, we had Kat, who was incredible behind the scenes.

Nikki.

Nikki, who came in all the way from the West Coast to come and help us at this event.

And Griffin and Bethany did whatever we needed. And Griffin upgrading our—

Oh gosh, the logo is so much better.

Everyone's so much happier this year with the graphics. And they're like, what's wrong with the website? I'm like, I didn't give it up yet. Handing over to Bethany immediately. She'll fix it. Apparently, my rudimentary skills are not appreciated anymore. We have talented people.

We've grown. We're grown-ups now. We have an incredible graphic designer on our team to help.

And did we mention Alexis handling all the partnering on his own this year?

I did.

Excellent.

Pay attention. You don't listen to me. It's fine.

I don't.

It's okay.

But you know who I do listen to, Elaine? Our sponsors.

Oh, I like what you did there.

I know, right? That was a great segue. We didn't even plan it. We didn't even plan it. It's not even in our topic map.

It isn't.

But I do want to thank the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center and the Biofund, the University of Louisiana Lafayette, Baker-Donelson Collaborative Drug Discovery, or CDD Vault, The New Orleans Business Alliance, the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss for the alumni from there, the University of Louisville—not Louisville, but Louisville because I'm a native and I say it right—Greater New Orleans Inc., Tremonti Consulting, Nikon, Louisiana Economic Development, and the Tulane Innovation Institute for helping with staffing. They had their people. They in the Office of Intellectual Property Management at Tulane helped us staff the table. And you know our university host partners—the five of us who do the work. All year long and have already started today for 2025. Tulane Medicine, University of Mississippi, Xavier University of Louisiana, LSU Health New Orleans, and our newest partner, Auburn.

Yeah, it's incredible. And again, couldn't have been possible without them.

Yeah. What are the dates next year, Elaine?

I don't remember. I'm sorry.

October 28th and 29th, because you don't listen to me either.

I guess I could have read one of the many cards.

Even I knew that, Elaine.

Oh, honey, I don't even know what tomorrow is.

Elaine was threatening Ian earlier, and now he's Coming for her on the podcast.

I'm so tired from this incredible week that I don't even know what today is.

So yeah, so October 28th, 29th, 2025. That is not on the website yet, but it will be.

And you know, we do that strategically. It's an amazing time to come to New Orleans. And also, if you want to stay a little bit later and hang out during the Halloween festivities, super fun. We hope that you join us next year.

Anything else we need to talk about from this year? You just yawned. I did. I'm so tired.

I think that's a testament to an incredible week. And if you want to be a part of that week, join us next year.

Looking forward to it. Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again.

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