To Fight Cancer, Linking Investors and Inventors

Want to help cancer patients? Got some cash you’re looking to invest?

This week Boston University will play matchmaker between private investors and emerging biotech companies developing the next generation of cancer technology, from new drugs to diagnostic tests to medical devices.

An all-day conference, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, is being held on campus Thursday, November 5. The NCI chose BU to spearhead this inaugural event because of the Office of Technology Development’s expertise and the city’s extensive venture capital activity.

“The uniting theme is cutting-edge stuff that’s going to make an impact on cancer patients’ lives over the next 50 years,” says Stephen Ober, executive director of New Ventures, the group within the OTD that works with budding entrepreneurs and faculty to help them commercialize their inventions.

The National Cancer Institute tapped the University to select the strongest NCI-funded companies whose technologies are ready for commercialization, says Michael Weingarten, NCI’s director for SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and Technology Partnerships Programs.

“We’ve been working with Steve Ober for a year and half,” Weingarten says. “He’s had the experience of starting a couple of companies on his own, and with his New Ventures program, he has invested in the same types of companies that we are currently funding under SBIR. He understands our portfolio very well. He is ideally situated to put on this event for us.”

Ober pulled together experts from venture capital firms and pharmaceutical and medical device companies to evaluate the market readiness of 40 biotech companies from across the country. The group settled on 14 companies to present to potential investors.

“These are all really early-stage companies,” Ober says. “You’re not going to see Amgen or Genzyme, which have the capital to find out if something works. Here, the companies may have the cure for something, but they just don’t have the capital to invest, so the government is stepping in.”

The NCI’s SBIR program, which consists of two funding phases worth on average $1.2 million, is a mechanism for academics who have invented what they think are promising technologies.

But ideas often die on the vine. So the NCI came up with the SBIR Bridge Award program, a $3 million, three-year award, to get them over the so-called Valley of Death between government funding and clinical development. Venture capital must be matched with funds raised by the award recipients. To help do that, Weingarten picked Boston as the site of the first investor forum, because along with San Francisco, it has the nation’s highest venture capital activity.

“By bringing the imprimatur of NCI, we’re helping attract a lot of investors to an event they might otherwise not be involved in,” Weingarten says. “We’ll be starting a lot of conversations that these companies wouldn’t be able to do on their own, with the venture capital community, with Big Pharma, and with the medical device community.”

Douglas Faller, a School of Medicine professor and director of MED’s Cancer Center, will introduce the conference. He says biotech companies have assumed an increasingly important role in the development of new cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

“Major pharmaceutical companies now rely heavily on small biotech firms to carry out their research and discovery programs,” he says. “Many major pharmaceutical companies have decreased the size of their own internal programs.”

Jonathan Cohen, president and CEO of 20/20 GeneSystems, Inc., a biotech based in Maryland, is developing a test for early detection of lung cancer. His firm is one of the 14 selected. Because NIH funding has been dedicated to basic research by academic groups, Cohen says, “thousands of scientific papers are generated, but rarely a new drug or medical device.

“Congress and disease advocacy organizations are growing impatient with the extremely slow progress of academic research and are pushing the NIH to come up with new funding mechanisms to accelerate cures,” he says. “The SBIR program is one of the few sources of funding for genuine innovation. The Bridge program should pull private capital off the sidelines and help move these technologies into the marketplace.”

Ober says the conference is a win-win for both sides.

“There’s no way an investor could see or screen 14 companies in one day, so this is a real boon to them, too.”

The NCI SBIR Investor Forum takes place Thursday, November 5, at the Trustee Ballroom, One Silber Way. More information on the forum is available here.

Caleb Daniloff an be reached at cdanilof@bu.edu.