Today, Inova Software and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) are announcing the first international series of virtual partnering events focused on three critical therapeutic areas with great unmet need - oncology, neuroscience and infectious diseases, happening until the end of the year.
Recognizing that COVID-19 forced an abrupt halt to global travel and conferences, the virtual partnering is an innovative approach for the scientific world to continue to meet and discover new opportunities for forging strategic partnerships. Building on their respective track record of organizing hundreds of thousands of meetings to accelerate partnering across the life sciences industry and large digital gatherings, Inova and BIO are creating a dedicated space for face-to-face interaction between top biotech companies, research labs and biopharma companies. The single therapeutic focus for each partnering event enables participants to cut through the noise and conduct targeted one-on-one business development meetings that bring the best science forward to advance product pipelines.
The first event, on oncology, will take place 22-24 September. Even with a record number of novel oncology drugs and a spate of new treatment options, such as immunotherapies and cytokine modulation, oncology is still one of the toughest areas in medical R&D. Challenges include severe competition, substantial risk of failure and lengthy timeline from bench to bedside. Many biotech start-ups lack the resources to develop, produce and distribute their innovations, which is why partnering can have a real impact. Fostering partnering between large and small companies in this space will lead to early-stage discovery collaborations, platform deals for preclinical or discovery-stage assets, licensing agreements, fresh paths to drug repurposing and new diagnostic tests or biological markers and the resources to advance these treatments through the pipeline.
Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, President and CEO at BIO, remarked: "Biotech companies and research labs are working to solve some of the most complex scientific challenges today and are breaking new ground in advancing life-saving treatments in oncology. But taking this work to the market faster requires having access to the right partners– exactly what the virtual partnering event is designed to facilitate. Innovation happens through meaningful connections.”
Gilles Toulemonde, Inova CEO and co-founder, said: "We’re thrilled to launch therapeutic area specific virtual partnering events with BIO. At Inova, our mission is to find new ways to innovate how partnering happens and to accelerate the partnering process for the benefit of patients. Despite the lockdown, there is an acute need for targeted meetings to continue for the sake of medical innovation in areas with high unmet needs. For our first event on oncology, we expect 5,000 virtual face-to-face meetings mostly between biotechs and biopharmaceutical companies.”
For further details and registrations or sponsorship opportunities, please go to: https://virtual-partnering.com/oncology/.