Speakers

• 

  Sammy Brutsche Boehringer Ingelheim

  Sammy Brutsche

  Business Development & Licensing at BI: The journey over the last years

  Over the last two decades, securing access to external innovation has become increasingly important for pharmaceutical companies and partnering models have become more creative and complex. This change in the partnering environment required a diverse set of capabilities and skills, and prompted pharma to adapt its business development strategies, structures, and processes to enable excellent support of the increasing number and complexity of partnerships. BI’s journey in Business Development & Licensing led BI from a more dispersed model to a structure with different functions under one roof. This brought clear, defined accountabilities, and also complementary contributions from all involved functions. Today’s presentation will present BI’s current organizational BD&L structure and how it helps us to achieve our corporate goals.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Sammy Brutsche
  Global Head Transactions & Contract Management | Boehringer Ingelheim
  

  Sammy currently serves as Global Head Transactions & Contract Management at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI). As part of the Business Development & Licensing department, Sammy’s team is responsible for accessing external innovation to fuel BI’s pipeline of therapeutics through licensing agreements and research collaboration agreements with other life science companies and with academia.

  Prior to joining BI, Sammy was Senior Director Corporate Development at Merz Pharmaceuticals, where she led the partnering and alliance management activities for therapeutic and aesthetic prescription products areas. Before joining Merz, Sammy was a business analyst at Accenture and a lab leader at Intervet Innovation, an animal health company. She earned a PhD from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and did her post doc training at the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Padova, Italy.

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  Alessandro Buccella KornFerry

  Alessandro Buccella

  Future-proofing your BD&L talent today to win in the future

  An overview of what are the critical ingredients of successful BD&L executives and how they have emerged over the past 20 years as the function has seen substantial transformation. From the perspective of development focused senior executives as well as hiring managers evaluating upcoming BD&L stars, we provide insights how to secure future readiness in your teams from a skills and competencies perspective and discuss the main trends and moving parts.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Alessandro Buccella
  Senior Partner | KornFerry
  

  Alessandro Buccella is a Senior Partner based in the Zürich office of Korn Ferry focusing on Global Life Sciences clients.

  Alessandro has 25 years of management consulting and industry experience. Throughout his career he has worked at international level, advising leading global bio-pharmaceutical and med-tech companies on how to improve top line performance by realigning go-to-market models, driving operational and organizational effectiveness and implementing large scale transformations.

  Alessandro is passionate about new emerging technologies and their impact on healthcare and life science businesses from a strategic, operational and human capital standpoint. Digital transformation, multichannel customer engagement, operating model innovation/(re-)design and commercial effectiveness are Alessandro’s main areas of expertise, with a track record of more than 100 assignments conducted at global, European and single country level.

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  Fabian Buller Neurimmune AG

  Fabian Buller

  Learning from the memory of life to develop next generation antibody therapeutics

  At Neurimmune, we focus on the discovery and development of human therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of CNS diseases and related protein aggregation diseases. Our research typically begins with analyzing thousands of human antibody sequences to design active antibodies that target a disease-related mechanism in an efficacious and safe fashion. By relying on human immune mechanisms as a starting point for our developments, we can access biological activities optimized by millions of years of immune system evolution.

  Neurimmune discovered aducanumab, a human monoclonal antibody that removes amyloid beta from brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and licensed it to Biogen. With our Reverse Translational Medicine technology, we also discovered the anti-tau antibody BIIB076 for Alzheimer’s disease, the anti-miSOD1 antibody AP-101 for ALS and the anti-ATTR antibody NI006 for ATTR cardiomyopathy, programs being currently evaluated in clinical trials.

  We will share insights into our journey of successfully growing a biopharmaceutical company based on a human antibody technology, an entrepreneurial business model and transformational strategic partnerships with the goal to advance next generation drug candidates for patients.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Fabian Buller
  Chief Business Officer | Neurimmune AG
  

  Fabian Buller serves as the Chief Business Officer (CBO) of Neurimmune AG, Zurich, Switzerland. He is an experienced biotech executive with 12 years of professional experience in biotech and pharma. Prior to joining Neurimmune in 2018, Fabian served as Director New Ventures at Johnson & Johnson Innovation as well as Director Business Development of Covagen AG. He was instrumental in securing major Biotech-Pharma deals including transactions with AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Ono Pharmaceuticals and Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma. Fabian holds a PhD degree from the Institute of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich.

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  Ana Cerdeira Grünenthal

  Ana Cerdeira

  How China became one of the largest world economies and how is it influencing the pharma industry

  Back in 2001, BRIC¹ nations were forecast to grow at a faster pace than the G7² group of leading nations Economists also postulated that in 2050 these economies would be wealthier than most of the major economic powers, but by 2021 China was the only BRIC country that exceeded its growth projections, followed by India which was not too far from those estimates.

  After opening to foreign trade and investment in 1979, China became the second largest world economy. In 2008, recognizing that the development of healthcare had lagged far behind overall economic growth, China launched a deep reform of the healthcare system. As China’s economy matured and its real GDP growth slowed, innovation was made a top priority through initiatives such as “Made in China 2025”.

  The healthcare reforms and growing innovation by China have led to challenges but also major new opportunities for multi-national pharma and biotech companies worldwide.

  ¹BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India, China. South Africa joined in 2010 becoming BRICS
  ²G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. Russia officially withdrew from the group in 2017 after being suspended when Russia annexed the Ukranian region of Crimea in 2014.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Ana Cerdeira
  Vice President, Head Global Commercial, Early Assets | Grünenthal
  

  Ana Cerdeira, Ph.D., has recently joined Grünenthal as VP, Head Global Commercial - Development Assets. In this role Ana is working with the Grünenthal team to explore and evaluate the market potential for inorganic and organic pipeline opportunities. Ana brings almost two decades of experience in global business development and strategic portfolio management. Prior to joining Grünenthal, Ana held several leadership positions at Molecular Partners as VP Strategic Planning and Portfolio Management and at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, as VP of Emerging Markets Portfolio Management. Previously, Ana held several positions at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, including CMC Drug Product Leader. She earned a MPharm from the University of Lisbon, Portugal and a Ph.D. from Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich), Switzerland.

• 

  Martin Heidecker AMR Action Fund

  Martin Heidecker

  The antimicrobial innovation challenge, what we have to do NOW

   

  Curriculum Vitae

  Martin Heidecker
  Chief Investment Officer | AMR Action Fund
  

  Martin Heidecker, PhD, MBA, Chief Investment Officer at AMR (AntiMicrobial Resistance) Action Fund joined the Fund in 2021 from the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund where he worked as Managing Director USA, in Cambridge, MA. Martin served as Board Director of ArmaGen Technologies, Inc (acquired by JCR Pharma), Tilos Therapeutics Inc. (acquired by Merck & Co Inc.), Sentien Biotechnologies Inc., Abexxa Biologics Inc. (acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim), Libra Therapeutics Inc. and Rgenta Therapeutics Inc. Martin also serves on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, the premier global life sciences and healthcare hub.
  Martin started his career as an investor focusing on seed investments in biotechnology companies in Germany. Later, he held several international Marketing positions at Solvay Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim in CNS and Oncology and was involved in the launch of various drugs in the CNS space.
  Martin holds a PhD in Biology from University of Würzburg and an MBA from FernUniversität Hagen.

• 

  Dr. Michael R. Hübner Johnson & Johnson Innovation

  Dr. Michael R. Hübner

  Accelerating translational research through collaboration and partnerships

  Switzerland is a global leader in healthcare innovation. This is due, at least in part, to its excellent academic system with several universities consistently ranked among the top academic institutions worldwide. A significant number of small public or private investors, as well as entrepreneurship programs and competitions support a vibrant startup ecosystem.

  How can life science entrepreneurs gain the right expertise to keep the momentum and compete globally for meaningful partnerships and investments? In this presentation I will discuss the success factors that help startups accelerate and translate their innovation into healthcare solutions for patients.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Dr. Michael R. Huebner
  Director Early Innovation Partnering | Johnson & Johnson Innovation
  

  Michael Hübner is the country lead in Switzerland for Johnson & Johnson Innovation, where he establishes collaborations and partnerships with researchers, entrepreneurs and life science companies. He is on the Johnson & Johnson Switzerland Leadership Team and he advises startups as a member of the selection board of the BaseLaunch (CH) and Alderley Park (UK) accelerators.

  Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Michael was Global Business Development and Licensing Manager at Roche. Before joining Roche, Michael worked as an EMBO fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (USA) and he earned a PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).

• 

  Vik Kabra Roche Partnering

  Vik Kabra

  Evolution of Business Development organisations as the function has gained strategic importance

   

  Curriculum Vitae

  Vik Kabra
  Global Head Transactions | Roche Partnering
  

  Vik Kabra is Global Head of Transactions for Roche Pharma Partnering based in Basel, Switzerland. In this role he has responsibility for structuring and negotiating Roche’s pharmaceutical license and collaboration agreements for products and technologies accessed from biotechs, pharma companies and academic institutions. At Roche Vik has led the negotiation of over 30 license agreements, several of which led to marketed products.

  Vik has worked with Roche in Basel since 2009, joining Pharma Partnering in 2013. He came to Basel from Genentech in South San Francisco where he worked in leadership positions in Corporate Finance supporting Business Development since 2005.

  Vik is a dual U.S. and Swiss citizen and holds an MBA in Finance from U.C. Berkeley.

• 

  Dr. Vincent Ossipow Omega Funds

  Dr. Vincent Ossipow

  Evolving Biopharma VC & BD Landscape

  Trends in the biopharma venture capital activity and business development will be
  discussed.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Dr. Vincent Ossipow
  Partner | Omega Funds
  

  Dr. Ossipow is Partner at Omega Funds, where he focuses on European investments in the areas of oncology, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases and medtech. Previously, Dr. Ossipow worked with Sectoral Asset Management, a healthcare institutional investor, as a Partner for private investments.
  From 2000 to 2006 he was a research fellow at the University of Geneva, studying
  the molecular basis of brain function, and also acted as Sectoral Asset Management’s Chief Scientific Officer during this period.
  Previously, he worked at Pictet Bank as a research analyst for biotechnology equities and as a co-manager of the Pictet Biotech Fund, a $2 billion listed investment vehicle.

• 

  Jean-François Ricci Alira Health

  Jean-François Ricci

  Implications on manufacturers and BD process with the rise of payers in the determination of value

  Over the last 20 years, since the 2003 seminal paper by Werner, Greiner and von der Schulenburg (Eur J Health Econom 4, 1–5), on top of demonstration of a product's safety, efficacy and quality, pharmaceutical manufacturers now have to clear a “4^th hurdle,” namely how payers determine the value of medicine and innovation. It has impacted how manufacturers design evidence collection, define their go to market and value strategy and prepare for pricing and reimbursement negotiations. This has translated in the rise of market access, health economics and outcomes research, and more recently real-world evidence capabilities within organizations and how manufactures must think about research priorities and contracting options with payers. 

  Leveraging case studies, we will review some of the most noticeable impact the “4^th hurdle” has had on organizational competencies, drug development and pricing and reimbursement (JF Ricci) and how it has impacted the BD process and implications on valuation for the seller and buyer (A. Wollersheim)

  Curriculum Vitae

  Jean-François Ricci
  Chief Access Officer | Alira Health

  Jean-François Ricci is Chief Access Officer for Alira Health, leading Market Access, Patient Engagement and Real-world Evidence. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Wellmera, a global market access consultancy acquired by Alira Health in 2019. Jean-Francois has 25 years of experience, including 12 years in consulting and 13 years in the pharmaceutical industry, working at global level as well as in the U.S. He has extensive experience in developing global and regional pricing, health economics, and commercial strategies, and delivering fact-based solutions to maximize commercial impact for pharmaceutical assets. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from the Université Claude Bernard, Lyon, France and a PhD in Clinical and Administrative Sciences and an MA in Business Administration from the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, US. Jean-Francois has authored and co-authored many peer-reviewed journal publications and presentations at conferences across multiple disease areas and methodological topics.

• 

  Sarah Rickwood IQVIA

  Sarah Rickwood

  From the millennium to 2030: the deals and drivers that have made the pharmaceutical industry what it is today, and what will shape its future

  The last 20 years saw profound changes in the drivers of value in the global pharmaceutical market:

  • The transition from primary care to specialty care as the dominant driver of value, and more recent importance of precision medicine and orphan medicines
  • The innovations and therapeutic areas to shape the market to 2030: Cell, gene and RNA therapeutic platforms, oncology, immunology and CNS
  • The rise of digital health technologies and digital health players, and their increasingly central role in the delivery of healthcare
  • The impact of the pandemic as a catalyst and inflection point for healthcare and pharmaceutical market change

  IQVIA examines the drivers and deals shaping today’s pharmaceutical market and the value and deal drivers which will shape the market to 2030.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Sarah Rickwood
  VP, EMEA Thought Leadership and Marketing | IQVIA

  Sarah Rickwood has 30 years’ experience as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. She has an extremely wide experience of international pharmaceutical industry issues, consulting to the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies on global issues and has been Vice President, European Marketing and Thought Leadership in IQVIA for 12 years.

  Sarah presents to hundreds of pharmaceutical industry clients every year on a range of global pharmaceutical industry issues, publishing white papers on many topics, including:

  • Uptake and impact of innovative medicines, and challenges for Launch Excellence
  • The impact of the pandemic on medicines markets and Rx launch
  • Orphan drugs launch challenges
  • Cell and Gene therapies commercialization challenges and opportunity

  Sarah holds a degree in biochemistry from Oxford University.

• 

  Ludger Schwinn KornFerry

  Ludger Schwinn

  Future-proofing your BD&L talent today to win in the future

  An overview of what are the critical ingredients of successful BD&L executives and how they have emerged over the past 20 years as the function has seen substantial transformation. From the perspective of development focused senior executives as well as hiring managers evaluating upcoming BD&L stars, we provide insights how to secure future readiness in your teams from a skills and competencies perspective and discuss the main trends and moving parts.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Ludger Schwinn
  Senior Client Partner | KornFerry
  

  Ludger Schwinn is a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry and a member of the Global Life Sciences Practice, based in Zurich, Switzerland. ​During 16 years Mr. Schwinn supported leading companies residing in Switzerland to identify, evaluate and place the best talents frpm the external market. His focus was senior executive leadership positions across the entire spectrum of pharma, biotech and medical devices. He specialises in commercial and BD&L leadership roles on a global scale. Mr. Schwinn also performed numerous strategic management assessments and contributed to international leadership and talent development programs for key clients. Before joining KornFerry Mr. Schwinn was the Managing Partner of the Swiss affiliate of an international executive search boutique. Prior to that he led the fast-growing affiliates of two renowned global big-pharma firms in Russia and the CIS. He set up sales and distribution operations and established the first Western JV for the manufacturing of vaccines in Russia. Today Mr. Schwinn leads some of KornFerry’s strategic global client partnerships in the pharmaceuticals sector as Account Director.

• 

  Thomas A. Tóth von Kiskér Tillotts Pharma AG

  Thomas A. Tóth von Kiskér

  Keynote: 20 Years Swiss HLG – 20 Years Deal Making! Are we today still discussing the same burning topics? How did our industry evolve over this period?

  Curriculum Vitae

  Thomas A. Tóth von Kiskér
  CEO | Tillotts Pharma AG
  

  Thomas a. Tóth, born in 1966 in Switzerland, is since the end of 2007 CEO of Tillotts Pharma AG, a fast-growing, international Pharma Company with its headquarters in Rheinfelden AG. He is also on the Board of various smaller pharma companies. Thomas holds a degree in economics (Lic. oec. HSG) of the University of St. Gallen.

  Thomas started his career in the early 90’s as a teacher for business administration, organization and national economy at the Business & Management School Zurich. He joined Tillotts in 1996, where he held the position of Deputy Director Sales & Marketing, Head of Business Development, Head of Corporate Development, before he was appointed as CEO.
  In addition, he was part of the Management Buy-Out Team (MBO), that acquired Tillotts in 1999 from Medeva Ltd. (later Celltech, now UCB) and one of the leading architects of the MBO exit, resulting in the sales of the company to Tillotts’ former licensee in Japan, Zeria Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. During the ten years of MBO, management leveraged the value of Tillotts over 100-fold.

  Thomas is a Founding Member and Honorary President of the Swiss HLG. In 2012, he was awarded with the Medal of Honour from the Carnegie Rescuer Foundation.
  He is a father of three grown-up children, and when he does not work, he goes passionately after his hobbies, such as Japanese gardening, golf, cooking, skiing and - as a drone pilot - taking photos.

• 

  Andreas Wallnöfer Jeito Capital

  Andreas Wallnöfer

  Funding sustainable biotech innovation

  The biotech industry is on a trajectory of growth, fueled by accelerating innovation in science and technologies. It remains a challenge - particularly in Europe - to best leverage excellent academic science and translate it into biotech and product development. Europe is, however, catching up with the US through larger and later-stage venture funding, which is necessary for the complex and capital-intensive biotech industry. Jeito Capital is a leading European independent investment fund (€534mn under management) with the mission to translate excellent science to biotech market leaders. The fund’s strategy is to invest in continuity with focus on growth and accelerating asset development globally. Jeito supports entrepreneurs, leveraging its multi-disciplinary, integrated and experienced health care team to enable faster access to life-saving therapies for patients.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Andreas Wallnöfer
  Partner & Investor | Jeito Capital
  

  Andreas Wallnöfer is Partner at Jeito Capital. He has over 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, including 12 years as a member of the F. Hoffmann-La Roche Pharma R&D Executive Leadership team and 5 years as a General Partner and Investor in Venture Capital.

  Andreas has been successful in developing innovative companies and is a board member of several European biotechs. Prior to his career in Venture, he was Head of Cardiovascular & Metabolism R&D and a member of the Roche/Genentech Portfolio Committee. Andreas was part of several successful product developments and market introductions. Before the integration of Genentech, Andreas was Global Head of Clinical Research.  He had a key role in the integration of the Roche and Genentech Development organizations and subsequently led Roche’s Early Development Department.

• 

  Markus Werner Novartis Oncology

  Markus Werner

  Two decades of success in cell therapies in oncology: Looking back at contribution of landmark deals and an outlook on future deal-making

  The first engineered T cells were developed in the 1990s and the introduction of co-stimulatory domains expedited clinical development efforts in this area, as it allowed those cells to persist and remain active in the body. The landmark collaboration between University of Pennsylvania and Novartis spawned the global CAR T cell therapy industry, which resulted in the world's first approved gene therapy for cancer Kymriah. Since then, we not only saw additional approvals of CAR-Ts in hematological indications such as Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Multiple Myeloma, but also the advancement of new cell and gene modalities such as alternative cell types (natural killer cells, macrophages, etc.), new manufacturing methods (allogeneic formats) and new engineering or immune receptors concepts. These efforts also aim to expand cell therapies from hematological to solid tumor indications.

  During all these advancements, partnerships played a critical role in the establishment of cell therapies in our industry - this presentation will not only look back at previous collaborations but also dare to share thoughts on future deal making.

  Curriculum Vitae

  Markus Werner
  Executive Director BD&L Oncology | Novartis Oncology

  Markus is a BD professional with a deal track record built over more than 20 years encompassing varied deal types and partnerships across different development stages and disease areas. In his current role as Executive Director BD&L at Novartis Oncology in Basel, he oversees BD&L activities related to cell and gene therapies in oncology and has a therapeutic area responsibility for malignant haematological diseases on a franchise level (lymphomas and multiple myeloma). Previously he served as VP Business Development and Alliance Management of BioNTech in Mainz and Molecular Partners in Zürich. Markus holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Technical University of Stuttgart, Germany.

• 

  Alexandra Wollersheim Alira Health

  Alexandra Wollersheim

  Implications on manufacturers and BD process with the rise of payers in the determination of value

  Over the last 20 years, since the 2003 seminal paper by Werner, Greiner and von der Schulenburg (Eur J Health Econom 4, 1–5), on top of demonstration of a product's safety, efficacy and quality, pharmaceutical manufacturers now have to clear a “4^th hurdle,” namely how payers determine the value of medicine and innovation. It has impacted how manufacturers design evidence collection, define their go to market and value strategy and prepare for pricing and reimbursement negotiations. This has translated in the rise of market access, health economics and outcomes research, and more recently real-world evidence capabilities within organizations and how manufactures must think about research priorities and contracting options with payers. 

  Leveraging case studies, we will review some of the most noticeable impact the “4^th hurdle” has had on organizational competencies, drug development and pricing and reimbursement (JF Ricci) and how it has impacted the BD process and implications on valuation for the seller and buyer (A. Wollersheim)

  Curriculum Vitae

  Alexandra Wollersheim
  Chief Access Officer | Alira Health

  Alexandra Wollersheim has 10 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical industry in various roles and positions. Before joining Alira Health, Alexandra worked for Staatz Business Development & Strategy, a boutique life sciences consultancy and transaction advisory firm gaining different experiences across strategy, sell- and buy-side transaction advisory projects working closely with the client’s management team and board members. 

  Prior, Alexandra held different positions within Commercial Operations and Business Development at Biotest, a €500 million Biopharmaceutical company, where she was lastly responsible for the Business Development activities in the field of immunology.

  Alexandra holds Bachelor of Science degrees in International Business from the Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and in Molecular Biotechnology from the Technical University of Munich, Germany.

• 

  Lu Zheng Takeda EUCAN

  Lu Zheng

   Partnering across the healthcare ecosystem

   

  Curriculum Vitae

  Lu Zheng
  Head of Value Based Partnerships and Patient Solutions | Takeda EUCAN
  

  Lu Zheng is the Head of Value Based Partnerships and Patient Solutions at Takeda EUCAN. Takeda’s Europe and Canada (EUCAN) Business Unit operates across 37 countries and is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. The EUCAN Business Unit focuses on delivering life-transforming treatments in the therapy areas of rare metabolic diseases, gastroenterology, neuroscience, plasma-derived therapies and oncology.
  In her current role Lu focuses on leading strategic partnerships with healthcare ecosystem partners across Takeda EUCAN, supporting Takeda's mission of driving value-based healthcare.
  Lu is also responsible for regional innovative patient solutions and digital health strategy for in-line and pipeline portfolios.