Year ahead Outlook from BiotechShowcase & Wuxi during JPM 2024

During the annual #JPM2024 healthcare conference week, by some accounts, 10,000 health technology professionals descended upon the city of San Francisco. Besides the flagship J. P. Morgan conference and #BiotechShowcase conference, there were numerous other conferences and events during the day and fancy and festive receptions during evening to late night hours. Broadly speaking, JP Morgan conference focused more strongly on discussions and company presentations regarding new products in the pipeline, their financial progress and outlook and operational changes. The conference put up by Sara Jane Damy at @DemyColten and @EBDgroup, is called an investor conference and focuses on sharing news and information and collaborative platforms including one on one partnering events to enable attendees to connect based on mutual interest and shared goals to help advance to next stage. 

I will try to summarize a few things that I heard at #BiotechShowcase and during an afternoon of premier event by wuxiforum@wuxiapptec.com as well as what I surmised about the general mood from my interactions. 3100+ attendees and 900+ investors were in attendance at  the BiotechShowcase conference and related events like DigiMed Showcase and SeedShowcase at and around the Hilton, San Francisco. Wuxi conference also took place at the Hilton.

• Money, funding strategy, & investment outlook in the year ahead: There seemed to be considerable interest in the money side of things in the year ahead. There were several panels focusing on discussions pertaining to funding and even panels on specific therapies often alluded to and/ or focused on raising money. A panel on sickle cell disease therapies for instance, discussed the availability of capital on the private versus public side. As the funding has become tighter, emerging companies are faced with decisions regarding spend for product launches. Some underfund launches and as a result underperform and some overfund with costs that do not add value. Panel of experts from Syneos Health, Akari Therapeutics, Eidos, and Tarus discuss that aspect of business.  A panel from J&J, Merck, Astellas, and Regeneron discussed business development and partnering landscape with big pharma.  A panel from KKH, Khosla Ventures, TRx Capital and Sanofi discussed how to get noticed and get investors and biopharma to see the financial value in digital health technologies.  Syneos Health shared from its long term study,  findings and prospective view of partnering and licensing landscape for the year ahead. A panel from NYU Langone, Breakout Ventures, Boom Capital and Novo Nordisk discussed challenges to attracting early seed financing and strategies to extend the runway. There were more discussions on transformative business models and a panel discussed the state of the funding environment in the year ahead. Expert panel shared advice for companies currently fundraising, discussed best practices and strategies to successfully navigate through the early phase to managing risks and get to exits in a challenging market. 

In general, the mood looked upbeat with a creative array of strategies to help navigate in a challenging environment and exciting product pipelines pointing to a more promising year ahead.

• Role of #AtificialIntelligence, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality and other digital technologies in #healthtech: A panel discussed the impact of digital health technologies, incorporating digital medicine into the workflow and it’s role in maintaining adherence. Another panel of experts from DiMi, AliveCor, SVB, Continuum Health and Genealis reflected upon how digital health is poised to transform healthcare and highlighted recent collaboration models and the considerations that come into play for patients, payers, companies and investors. Use of advanced algorithms to identify molecules with greater speed may revolutionize treatments with less cost. AI will have a huge impact on obesity, metabolic disorders, type II diabetes and more. Also exciting is the impact of digital technologies like #VirtualReality, artificial intelligence and Biosensing technologies converging with on #MentalHealth. These technologies will enable mental health assessment and impact to be more objective and functional.

As tech tools become more sophisticated, clearly they are poised for a huge impact on #healthcare. The impact they could have on mental health is indeed very exciting. We can anticipate incredible impact not just in diagnosing and treating but also in predicting and pre-empting mental health conditions emerging from life traumas. 

• Regenerative Medicine: This was a huge focus given that regardless of strides in early treatments of diseases, tissues and organs get damaged by age, disease, trauma and improvements are now becoming possible with tissue engineering, cellular and genetic therapies. With convergence of health technologies new solutions are emerging. It is too vast a field and beyond my scope for detailed discussion. There were several exciting panels on this topic.

• RNA Therapies: There is an increasing focus on RNA therapies and possibilities they bring for personalized medicines as well as for treatment for rare diseases like sickle cell disease. Advances in drug delivery vehicles will continue to bring RNA therapies more into prominence.

• Health Equity & Access: Both at Biotech Showcase and Wuxi, panels of experts discussed the importance of removing barriers and improving healthcare access and equity for all. A panel at Biotech Showcase also discussed women’s health that is garnering increasing attention and funding. However, as noted by a panelist, the check sizes are often smaller when it comes to women’s health. According to Fortune Business Insights, the market for women’s health is expected to grow to $40 billion by 2027 across therapeutics and medical devices. 

There was a general mood of optimism during the JPM 2024 week. As observed by Gabe Cavazos from Leerink Partners, the sentiment has been at an all time low and it can only go up from here. On an even more optimistic note, news coming from JPM indicates that many big pharma companies have exciting products in the pipeline and several well capitalized companies in stealth mode are making strides.