biotech Archives - HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES NEWS

What are the Life Science Transaction Trends in the Wake of the Sanitary Crisis?

by Emmanuelle Trombe | Jul 29, 2020 | Health M&A, Health Private Equity, Life Sciences, Life Sciences Private Equity

In the second installment of McDermott’s webinar series, HPE Europe 2020: What are the Life Science Transaction Trends in the Wake of the Sanitary Crisis?, moderator and McDermott partner Emmanuelle Trombe and industry experts Joseph El Khoury of Natixis, Cédric Garcia of EY’s Life Science Group, Dr. Erich Tauber of Themis Bioscience and Daniel Teper of CYTOVIA Therapeutics shared lessons learned from the first half of 2020, when COVID-19 changed the world. The panelists also discussed the outlook for life sciences transaction trends in the second half of the year and beyond.

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Opportunities in Outsourced Pharmaceutical Services

by Kristian A. Werling | Jun 13, 2019 | Health Private Equity, Life Sciences, Life Sciences Private Equity

Pharmaceutical outsourcing has emerged as a robust—and rapidly growing—subsector of the life sciences industry. As the push for efficiency continues, more pharmaceutical, biotech and medtech companies are turning to contract research organizations (CROs), contract development organizations, medical affairs outsourcing and other service providers for help bringing products to market, manufacturing and distributing products, and improving quality. This trend is creating exciting new opportunities for investors in this burgeoning space.

Several factors are driving this growth in pharmaceutical services outsourcing:

Pharma companies are becoming more comfortable with outsourcing. Of outsourced service providers, CROs have the highest penetration, with approximately 50 percent of clinical trials outsourced. Other areas of outsourcing are far less penetrated, however, offering ample opportunity for investment. Consider researching opportunities in health economics or outcomes research market access, for example.
The current health care/pharma environment is rich for pharma outsourcing. Biotech is thriving: capital is readily available, and the US Food and Drug Administration regulatory environment for approval of new products is favorable. On the pharmaceutical front, ongoing consolidation has fostered an efficiency mindset. And across the health care and life sciences space, big data is being harnessed in new ways that make outsourcing easier and more efficient than ever.
We are in a period of great market fragmentation. The market is starting to skew toward earlier stage rather than big pharma companies. Trials also are increasingly designed with an emphasis on subpopulations and advanced analytics (such as specialty drugs targeted to specific genotypes). Traditional pharma often lacks [...]

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Collaborative Transformation: Life Sciences Partnerships – Delivering Deals that Work

by McDermott Will & Emery | May 22, 2019 | Life Sciences

The life sciences marketplace has been ripe for collaboration for the past decade, but new players, new technologies and new regulations are changing the space. Traditional life sciences companies are working together in new and exciting ways, bringing a variety of deal structures and new complexities into the landscape. Our Collaborative Transformation podcast episode “Driving the Deal: Life Sciences Partnership Opportunities, Pitfalls and Impact” with Emmanuelle Trombe and Gary Howes explores these issues in depth. Below are key takeaways from the episode, which you can listen to in full here.

It’s not just new players changing the space—it’s new approaches by traditional players. “It’s not only about pharma and biotech,” Trombe said. “We are seeing collaboration with health care players such as payers, insurers and providers.” Technology companies are also entering the space, bringing financial and philanthropic investments to the table. “People are still trying to do the same things, but they’re getting there in slightly different ways,” Howes said. Collaborations are also shifting from exclusive collaborations to more open collaborations, where partners are more closely involved in the product lifecycle, co-developing products and sharing technology, data and profits.

Bridging the gap between different industry cultures is crucial to building a successful collaboration. Product lifecycles and regulatory regimes vary across industries, but the gap between technology and health care/life sciences is particularly broad. “Life sciences health care companies looking at a lifecycle for their [...]

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Connecting the Dots: Six Lessons from a Biotech M&A Case Study

by Al Sokol | Nov 13, 2018 | Health M&A, International Health, Life Sciences

For biotechs, success involves a several year hike through mazes of complex, cross-border, business, scientific, financial and regulatory issues. During this year’s BIO2018 conference in Boston, McDermott gathered a panel of industry leaders and McDermott practitioners and led a case study assessment of cross-border biotech M&A, linking life sciences hubs in Europe, Asia and North America. I had the opportunity to moderate our panel as we walked through the structuring and closing of an M&A transaction that involved the auction of a fictional US biotech company that has oncology platform IP/technology. While the company described in the case study was fictional as such, the company and its circumstances were a composite of McDermott’s actual deals.

Our panel’s examination of this case study yielded valuable insights into the context, cross-border dynamics, practicalities, opportunities and challenges underlying the growing volume of international life sciences M&A deals. For example, here are six takeaways.

Take a good look in the mirror. First, differentiate between your company’s wants vs. its needs, said Greg Benning, managing director and head of financial advisory at Back Bay Life Sciences Advisors. Review your company’s access to resources, particularly its near term funding, to make sure you can accomplish your development objectives regardless of whether your M&A aspirations are achieved. Next, conduct an in-depth analysis of the company’s platform and its asset portfolio, and assess how third parties will view it. This process should yield a realistic assessment of actionable alternatives. “Having defined the playing [...]

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