Venture capital for the Life Sciences sector
Brenda Irwin of Relentless Venture Fund discusses how the pandemic has impacted capital for healthcare (770 words, 6 min)
NPC Healthbiz Weekly is presented to you in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions
Though Covid-19 has affected how Brenda Irwin conducts business, the Founder and Managing Partner of the Relentless Venture Fund continues to see a steady increase in money invested into the healthcare and Life Sciences sector.
The Relentless Venture Fund is a health technology venture capital fund dedicated to investing in preventive and proactive technology solutions that optimize healthcare.
Irwin’s goal as a healthcare investor is to identify businesses with the potential to disrupt care, service or operational efficiencies while also reducing costs.
“That at the heart is what venture investing in health is about,” Irwin (photo below) explained on a recent episode of the NPC Podcast, a program for Pharma executives hosted by Peter Brenders. Brenders is the General Manager of BeiGene Canada (Listen to the episode here.)
“When I say disrupt, and [what] venture investors are looking at is, you have a standard of care, but is there a better way to do it and accelerate care? We saw a lot of that in the last year with respect to how remote patient monitoring and telehealth were introduced globally.”
While technology and virtual tools have been helpful in patient care during the pandemic, the shift to virtual conferences and events has turned out to be a hindrance to Irwin’s process of screening for business opportunities.
“When you go to conferences, and whether you're speaking or you're listening, you're mingling. I miss the serendipity of connections, and you can’t create that on Zoom,” she said. “I’m pretty good at working the room. [At in-person events] I like watching who is interacting with who and then going and sort of merging in conversations.
“Deals get done in those conference halls. There is an energy that you can pick up on when you've been doing this for so many years. Venture capital is a relationship business. Missing those moments to develop those relationships organically, is a big deal because it’s the best way to find co-investing partners.”
Though the pandemic has thrown a wrench in her preferred methods for cultivating relationships and finding potential investors, Irwin said she had seen a steady increase in investments in healthcare over the past three years, especially in the past 18 months.
She credits liquidity for the recent positive change in Life Sciences and healthcare investment.
“[Twenty] years ago, the markets dried up. Relentless, like any other healthcare fund, [receives] money from limited partners and primarily institutional partners, or institutional limited partners,” Irwin said. “They have to see the potential for liquidity. Liquidity comes from either [mergers and acquisitions] or through the public markets.
“Well, the public markets dried up in the early 2000s, and there were tons of clinical failures, so the institutions ran away, and biotech was getting zero love.”
In Canada, Irwin notes, there have been numerous successes in clinical trials and in public offerings in recent years. As a result, the valuations have increased exponentially, and it translates to returns for the limited partners.
“For digital health and health tech, where we’re invested, the IPOs, the mega-deals, the fact that the tech giants are coming into digital health, are all good proxies for where we are and where we are headed,” Irwin remarked. “It’s a very exciting time to be in health tech, and I don’t have to be as scrappy as I was three years ago to get people’s interest.”
The takeaway: With the increase in life expectancy and rising healthcare costs, there is a greater need for investment in healthcare, said Irwin.
“Areas that we’re looking at to address the ageing demographic and chronic disease management is behaviour change,” she said. “Can you change behaviour to mitigate the risk of developing diabetes or heart disease?
“Predictive Analytics [is another area]. One of the companies we’re looking at now is doing an exquisite job of predicting the progression of CNS conditions. The so-what of having identified an ability to be predictive around the progression of a CNS condition is that a clinician and the whole healthcare ecosystem can manage individuals differently and objectively.”
Irwin said investors are finally paying attention to the ageing population and the need to consider continuity of care. With U.S. statistics suggesting at least 10,000 people are turning 65 every day, Irwin said there is plenty of prospects in this area.
Further reading: Venture capital investment in Life Sciences was at a record-high in the third quarter of 2020, according to MedCity News, an online publication for the business of innovation in healthcare. Peter Meath, Co-Head of Healthcare and Life Sciences for Middle Market Commercial Banking at J.P. Morgan, believes the momentum will continue through 2021. Article here.
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YOUR HEALTHBIZ WEEK 05/18/21
Data from Amgen and AstraZeneca’s NAVIGATOR Phase III trial showed tezepelumab reduced asthma attacks requiring hospitalizations better than placebo in patients with severe asthma. Using the Phase III trial data, the companies have submitted a Biologics License Application to the U.S. FDA to use tezepelumab in patients with severe asthma.
Company executives from Emergent BioSolutions will testify before a congressional probe in the U.S. following a manufacturing error that resulted in 15 million ruined doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine. Fuad El-ibri, the founder and executive chairman of Emergent and Robert Kramer, the company’s chief executive officer, will testify before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. Emergent’s manufacturing facility in Baltimore accidentally switched an ingredient for J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine in March. J&J contracted the manufacturing facility owned by Emergent for vaccine production.
Merck is hoping its treatment Keytruda will get approval as a neoadjuvant treatment for triple-negative breast cancer. The drugmaker announced results from the late-stage KEYNOTE-522 study that should support the previous attempt denied by both a regulatory advisory committee in February and the U.S. FDA in March. The latest data assessing Keytruda showed the study met the dual primary endpoint of event-free survival (EFS) as a treatment for patients with high-risk early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.
NATIONAL PHARMA CONGRESS SUMMER WEBINAR
“Post-Covid Countdown” is the theme of the National Pharma Congress Summer Webinar, scheduled for Tuesday, June 22, 2021. The event comes on the heels of the recent NPC Spring Webinar, which had 400 registrants. Faculty for the Summer 2021 event are Ronny Miller (Roche Canada), Melissa Coomey (Gilead Sciences), and Brian Canestraro (Intercept Pharma). Your hosts are: Ben Parry (Pangaea Consultants) and Mitch Shannon (Chronicle Companies.) Be sure to watch the NPC HealthBiz Weekly for updates on the event.
CANADIAN HEALTHCARE MARKETING HALL OF FAME
The Canadian Healthcare Marketing Hall of Fame awards were established in 2002 to honour healthcare marketers who have contributed to our avocation and are an inspiration to others.
More than 100 honourees have been selected during the past 18 years. In the selection committee's view, they stand for a representative cross-section of the qualities that make our business unique and fulfilling. Each week, NPC Healthbiz Weekly will acknowledge one past Hall of Fame Honourees.
2009 Inductee
Mike Kirkley
MarketForce Communications Inc.
Cambridge, Ont.
Editor’s note: Mike helped create MarketForce Communications Inc. in 1993, where he worked until he died in 2002.
Before working in the pharmaceutical industry, Mike Kirkley was a running back in the Canadian Football League, playing for teams that included the Toronto Argonauts and the Calgary Stampeders. He was a football star when he attended the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., playing for the Western Mustangs, and was drafted No. 1 by the Argonauts once out of school. His competitive nature in sport carried over to corporate life.
While working as a brand manager at Eli Lilly Canada Inc., Kirkley teamed up with friend and colleague Paul Hickey and Greg Kochuk from Bayer. The three struck out on their own, forming a healthcare agency in Cambridge, Ont. called MarketForce Communications Inc. in 1993. The company grew to have operations in Montreal as well, and over the course of the next decade became the agency of record for many of the industry’s biggest brands, including Adalat (Bayer), Losec and Nexium (AZ), and Zyprexa (Lilly). MarketForce was purchased by Young & Rubicam in 1999.
“Mike was ultra-competitive,” remembers Paul Hickey, who started his own full-service healthcare agency in Peterborough called BrandHealth Communications Inc. in 2005. “He was a character who was bigger than life. Our new business pitch record at MarketForce was pretty incredible. It was a success rate that was unheard of. It was something like 24 wins and five losses.”
Kirkley and his wife Sandy, a respected orthopedic surgeon in London, Ont., died in a small plane crash in 2002 en route home from his wife’s speaking engagement in the US. Kirkley, a pilot, flew the plane to the US location with his sons to pick up Sandy. The two boys survived the crash.
Hickey and his wife, parents of two daughters, were legal guardians of Kirkley’s sons and adopted the boys, then aged 5 and 7, immediately after the tragedy. The boys now live with an aunt and uncle in Barrie, Ont.
“The loss of Mike’s life was tragic,” says Hickey. “Although it was cut short, he had a pretty incredible10-year run in our world of healthcare advertising. In years to come, I’m sure it would have been an incredible 30-year run.”
Hickey describes Kirkley as a man with a strong entrepreneurial spirit who took great pride in the fact that the agency he started from scratch with his two former Eli Lilly colleagues was, indeed, a force to be reckoned with. “Mike was always proud of the fact that the company grew to be so big and strong – and had so many full-time employees (45),” notes Hickey. “And he loved beating other agencies, especially the big, established ones.”
Losing such a key ingredient in an agency’s success was not easy. Clients of the agency were very understanding during the firm’s difficult transition.
“Our clients were amazing and really good about this,” says Hickey. “It was a testament to the way they felt about Mike. The relationships he had with his clients were very strong. Mike was the person who focused on new business. He spent a lot of time finding and nurturing new clients. But he didn’t stop there. He stayed close to those clients and helped them grow their business.”
Internally, the other partners at MarketForce and staff forged ahead, continued to grow their business and got even stronger.
“We really just stepped up our game,” he says. “For a couple of years, everybody just really just put their heads down and wanted to do this for Mike.”
One of the steps Hickey made to honour Kirkley was to establish a summer internship in advertising in Kirkley’s name at the University of Western Ontario. A deserving business student receives an opportunity to work in pharmaceutical advertising each summer.
In his own shop, Hickey continues to be inspired by Kirkley’s persistence and never-give-up attitude.
“Mike didn’t want to stay back in his corner office,” he says. “He wanted to be out there in the trenches helping his clients figure out how to sell more product. That, as well as his competitive spirit, has really stayed with me.”
A NEW PODCAST
“NPC Podcast Presents: Next in Pharma” is coming soon to a podcast download site near you. The first episode, “AI-Powered Analytics,” is hosted by Michael Cloutier. Mike’s guests are: Martin Booth, Director of Analytics and Data Excellence at AstraZeneca; Omer Ariburnu, Affiliate Head of Customer Excellence and Operations at Biogen, and; Shawna Boynton, Omnichannel Marketing Manager at Novo Nordisk. “NPC Podcast Presents: Next in Pharma” is presented in co-operation with our friends at ODAIA.ai
NEXT WEEK
The 05/25 edition of NPC Healthbiz Weekly will feature Myka Osinchuk, the Managing Director of Western Management Consultants, about working across different industries and consulting during Covid-19. It’s easy to get your no-charge subscription and have the issue sent to your phone or inbox each Tuesday at 6:00 a.m. sharp.
Stay safe, stay sure, and stay on your game. We’ll see you again next Tuesday.