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LIFESCIENCELEADER.COM JULY 2014 34 EXCLUSIVE LIFE SCIENCE FEATURE leaders SOHINI CHOWDHURY, Senior VP Of Research Partnerships, The Michael J. Fox Foundation For Parkinson's Research (MJFF): We devote about $70 million toward research every year, but on the scale of industry drug development, that represents just a drop in the bucket. So we need to make sure we prioritize our funding to the most promising areas of therapeutic develop- ment, advancing a drug candidate to the point where it can be partnered with the groups that have more experience and deeper pockets to bring it to market — biotech and pharma. It took us a few years to staff up and plan how we could engage with industry and devote our resourc- es to tackling related issues. In 2010, we launched the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative, a public-private part- nership for an observational, longitudinal study to identify progression markers for Parkinson's disease. Though the study is in collaboration with industry, we are its sponsor and a primary funder. Sixteen pharmaceutical and biotech partners pro- vide not only financial input, but also sig- nificant expertise and intellectual input to help us manage the study and to analyze the data coming out of it. Although typically the size of funding from disease foundations, with notable exceptions, is relatively small in industry terms, its value in validating and attracting additional investment to small companies is evident. Less obvious, however, may be the effect of foundation support inside larger companies, as a legal expert specializing in industry-foundation partnerships points out. DAVID LUBITZ, Partner, Schaner And Lubitz, PLLC: I have seen a number of medium to large biopharmaceutical companies come to the disease foundations for rela- tively small amounts of money because their programs must demonstrate inter- nally not only that their technologies are promising, but also that they can attract seed funding to push them forward. So the disease foundations become de facto advocates for the technologies by funding them and participating in the collabora- tion within the companies. That is a vivid example of resource leveraging because, in a medium or a large company, which may receive at most a half-million dollars from some of the collaborations, the foun- dation funding may be enough to get the project off the ground, but its real value is to justify the project internally — to the folks who hold the purse strings. In the case of the Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF), the currency of support is not money as it is with most other foundations, but knowledge. This group creates investigatory tools and produces data that guides discovery and development of drugs to repair damaged myelin, the protective sheath around nerves, primarily in multiple sclerosis. But though its native language is science, not business, the group invests many of its resources speaking to companies in terms the industry understands. JENNIFER CHANG, Director Of Communications, The Myelin Repair Foundation: We don't view industry as a collection of quasi-CROs to bring our compounds to the market, the traditional way many nonprofits have worked with industry. We realized we needed to replicate the academic research results and formulate comprehensive data packages that would interest industry. We opened up our own lab and have created our own proprietary myelin-repair drug assays that no one else in the world has, and because we're a nonprofit, we're able to work with many pharmaceutical com- panies to test any of their compounds that are interesting for myelin repair, to give them further evidence and support, whether or not they ultimately go into clinical development. Besides funding, staff, and even knowledge itself, perhaps the most valuable asset a foundation might bring to a partnership from a company perspective is its ability to attract disease experts and key opinion leaders (KOLs) — another stake the MRF can place on the table. CHANG: Traditionally, nonprofits have used a funding model based upon peer review, giving out individual grants in academic research and hoping the published papers would reach industry. But we leverage our nonprofit status to give us the freedom to operate with many more scientists and experts. We can bring people together at a table that universities may not. We can engage with the right people at every step of the drug development process, from the bench to FDA approval, to greatly acceler- ate the process. Companies may also be the catalyst for KOL- fueled collaborations. Amplimmune formed an alliance with Fast Forward, the industry- partnering subsidiary of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS), and Northwestern University to move along the company's early development of a molecule to tame abnormal immune responses. It found that teaming the partners' hard assets with their "intangible" resources — all pushing in the same direction — brought quite tangible results. MICHAEL RICHMAN, President And CEO, Amplimmune: Although people focus on the financial investment, the intangible value contributed by foundations is just as important, tapping into their network of professionals — exchanging and sharing ideas, obtaining access to materials such as patient blood and tissue samples that may be vital in one's research. Foundations are learning how to use KOLs (key opinion VOICES OF BAYBIO'S "SUCCESSFUL PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS" SURVEY By W. Koberstein The concept of de-risking is really central to why and how we think about placing our money and working with industry. S O H I N I C H O W D H U R Y Senior VP Of Research Partnerships, The Michael J. Fox Foundation For Parkinson's Research 0 7 1 4 _ B a y b i o _ 2 . i n d d 3 0714_Baybio_2.indd 3 6 / 2 0 / 2 0 1 4 1 2 : 2 7 : 5 5 P M 6/20/2014 12:27:55 PM