【活动】BioVerse episode 15 - M&A,The Ultimate Biotech Exit

Why Attend this Event?

After originally joining Abbott in 2011, Niels has held several positions with Abbott and, since its inception as a fully independent spin-off company in 2013, AbbVie. Niels currently serves in the Corporate Business and Strategy Office as Vice President, Global Search & Evaluation and Global Alliances. Transactions that his group and Niels were involved in include acquisitions (Pharmacyclics, Stemcentrx, Allergan, Mavu Pharma, DJS Antibodies, ImmunoGen, Cerevel, Landos and Celsius, as well as numerous R&D collaborations, option- and license agreements. Recent (2024) BD transactions and new alliances include agreements struck with Umoja, Tentarix, OSE Immunotherapeutics, Parvus, Medincell, Gilgamesh, FutureGen, Celsius, and Ripple Therapeutics. As interim head of AbbVie Ventures (2022) Niels oversaw new and follow-on equity investments made by AbbVie Ventures.

Prior to joining AbbVie Niels was CEO of BioPheresis, co-founder and COO of immatics biotechnologies (NASDAQ: IMTX), and a strategic management consultant with McKinsey & Company.

Niels received his master’s degree and Ph.D. in Immunology from University of Tübingen.

Dr. Dandan Dong joined TCGX as a venture partner to lead the venture formation effort. She brings over 15 years of global healthcare investment and biotech operating experience. Before joining TCGX, she served as the Chief Business Officer of ArriVent Biopharma, where she played an essential role in company formation and acquired the ex-China rights of the core asset, furmonertinib. She was also instrumental in the company’s private and public financing activities.

Prior to that, Dr. Dong was the Managing Director of Vivo Capital, the General Partner of Vivo PANDA Fund and Innovation Fund II. She incubated biotech companies with cross border strategies, including Visen Pharmaceutical, a joint venture with Ascendis Pharma. As the founding CBO and Executive board member, she led pipeline acquisition, corporate strategy, management recruitment, financing, while chairing the joint collaboration committee. She co-founded RareStone Group, the first rare disease ecosystem in Greater China.

Lihua is a seasoned serial entrepreneur and biotech executive. He is currently co-founder and CEO of Z-Star Therapeutics Inc., a New York City-based biotech company developing the next generation oncology and immunology therapeutics.  Previously he co-founded AnHeart Therapeutics in 2018 as its Board Director and Chief Business/Strategy Officer responsible for business development, financing, legal and US operation. He led the successful in-licensing of three clinical-stage oncology assets from Daiichi Sankyo, and the successful out-licensing of commercial rights separately to Nippon Kayaku (TSE:4272), Innovent Biologics (XHKG: 1801) and NewG labs with upfront and milestone payments totaling more than $300 million plus double-digit royalties, and the financings that raised more than $100 million before AnHeart was merged into Nuvation Bio (NYSE: NUVB) in early 2024. Prior to company building, Lihua practiced laws in the life sciences industry first at an international law firm Proskauer and then at a boutique law firm he co-founded in New York City. He received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Human Genetics from Baylor College of Medicine. He obtained his Masters and Bachelor of Science degree from Fudan University.

Tess Cameron is a Principal on the Investment Team at RA Capital Management. Tess works on both public and private investments and serves on several company boards. Previously, Tess held finance leadership roles at Foghorn Therapeutics, Wave Life Sciences, and Biogen. Prior to joining biotech/pharma, she was a specialist in the corporate finance team at McKinsey & Co, focused on corporate transactions. Tess has a BA with a double major in Economics and Peace & Conflict studies from the University of Toronto, Canada.

Nora Luo focuses on patent prosecution and strategic intellectual property counseling in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Her practice includes preparation and prosecution of U.S. and international patent applications, patent portfolio management, due diligence evaluations, freedom-to-operate analyses, patentability evaluations, and inter partes review proceedings.

Nora has worked with established companies, start-ups, and research institutions. She has experience with a wide range of technologies, including immunotherapy (for example, antibodies, antibody drug conjugates, vaccines, cell-based therapies, CAR-T cell technology, immune checkpoint modulators), gene therapy, CRISPR technology, mRNA delivery, mRNA-based therapy, lipid nanoparticles, viral vector-based gene delivery system (for example, AAV [adeno-associated virus]), antibody engineering, RNA splicing, cancer therapeutics, virology, stem cells, neurological disorder therapeutics, high-throughput screening, genomics, diagnostic assays, anti-aging therapeutics, and small molecule pharmaceuticals.

Nora holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Princeton University. While at Princeton, she was awarded the American Society for Cell Biology Norton B. Gilula Award and was the recipient of the National Institute of Health Fellowship. Prior to joining Jones Day, Nora was a Damon Runyon Cancer Research fellow at The Rockefeller University. Her scientific work has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including Cell and Science, and was featured in The New York Times and Nature.

Leon ‘Jun’ Tang, is the founding partner of InScienceWeTrust BioAdvisory, a business development company focused on the East-West cross-border partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Tang is also the founder of InScienceWeTrust Community, which has more than 2,000+ members from Asian biotech community. He is also the c-founder and host of Bioverse webinar.

Dr. Tang serves as a scientific advisor to Mianus Capital, a boutique US-based healthcare PE/VC fund currently focused on ophthalmology. He is also an advisor to BioSpark, an Asian biotech professional’s association based in Massachusetts.

Previously, Dr. Tang was a senior director of BD Search & Evaluation at Shanghai Henlius Biotech, a public biotech listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a biotech sell-side analyst at Barclays Investment Bank, and a senior manager/senior analyst at the philanthropic venture fund of Cancer Research Institute of New York.

Dr. Tang has published 50+ academic papers, some of which are in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Lancet Oncology, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications, Science Advances, PNAS, etc. Dr. Tang received his bachelor’s degree from Tianjin University, master’s degree from Nankai University, PhD from Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai, and postdoctoral training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.