Biotech Roundup: Time Frame of Investments, Gap in Funding Proof of Concept, Personalised Medicine and Reverse Payments

Here are various items of biotech news that recently caught our eye. We’ve provided a summary of each trying to show how the news item relates to the bigger picture.

1. Time Frame of Biotech Investments

Advent Capital is setting up a fund to invest in early and midstage European biotechs (see here). The proviso is that they wish to see returns in 6 years. That illustrates the drawbacks of investing in biotech companies developing drugs. It usually takes 10 to 15 years to develop a drug, and that keeps a lot of investors away who want to see returns in around 5 years.

2. The Gap in Funding Proof Of Concept Work

UK non-profit organisations Cancer Research and Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research are funding proof of concept work in treating blood cancers (see here). This illustrates how infrastructure needs to be provided to do ‘basic’ research which won’t see any immediate returns. It remains for government to enter into these funding gaps to make sure research and innovation systems operate effectively.

3. Personalised Medicine

Personalised medicine is a difficult technology to develop as it is proving challenging to identify the appropriate markers. However it clearly has a lot of scope for improving patient care. ‘Incentives, Intellectual Property, and Black-Box Personalised Medicine’ (see here) examines changes needed to the innovation landscape to better develop this technology.

The US Supreme Court Akamai decision makes it harder to find induced infringement for multi-step method claims (see here) as it requires primary infringement by a single party. However for personal medicine the diagnostic part and the treatment parts of the invention could well be performed by different parties. This adds to the difficulties in obtaining patent protection beyond those caused by the Mayo and Myriad decisions.

4. What exits are happening in US biotech?

An article from the Life Sci VC blog (see here) discusses the proportion of IPO versus M&A exits that are happening in US biotech. The ratio is 40% IPO to 60% M&A. It’s therefore important to biotech to keep both options open.

5. Reverse Payments (Pay for Delay)

A recent PatentlyO article (see here) explained the economics of pay for delay settlements where it can be in a patentee’s interests to pay a generics company to stay out of the market, but this risks being anticompetitive.

A slightly old article on the European position can be found here.