Swag, shindigs lure all to exhibit hall, but dealmaking was goal

Although the sprawling exhibit hall at the BIO International Convention sometimes seems like an indoor advertising showcase for big pharma, it also serves as an essential meeting point for smaller companies seeking to expand their networks or attract that critical initial partner. Pity the poor exhibitor stuck in a back corner who has to compete with floor to ceiling exhibits featuring gourmet delicacies, live entertainment, celebrities and visiting dignitaries.

For that reason, many smaller firms gather under the banner of their state, region or country. The BIO Exhibition in Philadelphia featured more than 1,800 exhibitors, including 47 state, regional and international pavilions. France is one of the perennial players at BIO, and this week dozens of companies clustered under the familiar Tricolour to pitch their wares to the global biotech community.

Preparing for BIO – the most important event of the year for many participants – begins almost a year in advance as the nation's life sciences community corrals some of its best and brightest to meet up with potential partners and mingle with investors. Business France – one of the top 15 BIO exhibitors by size – split its pavilion into sections representing companies from Paris as well as outlying regions such as Alsace, Lille/Northern France, Auvergne, the Southeast, Greater Toulouse and Lyon/Rhône-Alpes. United in one pavilion, however, the organizations projected the single-minded message that collaborators have access to the nation's combined resources.

For Grand Lyon la métropole, aka Only Lyon, "our mission is to find companies that would like to set up a subsidiary or would like to come to Europe to do clinical research," said Nathalie Laurent, life sciences manager. "Sometimes they're looking for partners. The goal at the BIO Convention is to find companies who would like to set up shop in Europe, in France and in Lyon, where we think we can add value."

Lyonbiopole is one of the country's seven life sciences clusters, seeking to foster innovation across drug development, in vitro diagnostics, medical devices and technologies and veterinary medicine. The region boasts 18 research and clinical centers, 600 health care companies, 3,600 researchers and 32,000 hospital beds.

The goal of the nonprofit organization is to accelerate the development of small- and medium-sized companies pursuing life sciences innovation and, in turn, to spur economic development in the region, according to Florence Agostino-Etchetto, general director.

"BIO is the place to be for biotech," Agostino-Etchetto said. "We try to promote our companies and help to facilitate their coming here." The pavilion also fosters a sense of community for participants in the region, who don't have time for regular face-to-face meetings back in France, she added. Even when meetings at BIO don't play out, they often serve as sources of introduction or referral to other companies in Lyon or a neighboring region.

'THE BEST WAY TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS IS TO MEET'

PDC Line Pharma was one of the region's up-and-comers attending its first BIO. The start-up, spun out of the French blood bank, is developing cancer vaccines based on its plasmacytoid dendritic cell line, which it believes to be the only line of dendritic cells for therapeutic use. Founded in 2014 by Laurent Levy, CEO, and Joel Plumas, chief scientific officer, the Genoble-based company has moved its lead candidate into a phase I study in melanoma and has a second candidate in preclinical development in lung cancer. The company is currently raising money for clinical proof of concept studies in both indications.

PDC held back-to-back meetings over two days with contract research organizations, academic institutions, investors and potential partners – especially companies developing PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors.

"Our technology is very synergistic with PD-1s, and we would like to test the combination in a phase II trial," Levy told BioWorld Today. "We think we can increase the response of a PD-1 product."

The company's platform also is useful to validate antigens, which makes it attractive to CROs, Levy added. PDC hopes to generate sufficient proof of principal over the next three to four years to attract a pharma partner to a commercial development deal while it continues the hunt for additional early-stage candidates.

Dominique Costantini, CEO of Paris-based OSE Pharma SA, also joined the French delegation, fresh off the company's IPO in March. (See BioWorld Today, March 11, 2015.)

OSE's non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) vaccine, Tedopi (formerly EP-2101), is a combination of 10 neo-epitopes derived from five tumor antigens and designed to direct a cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response at the cancer. The company completed a phase II study and is preparing to launch the phase III in the second half of the year so it, too, is looking for partners.

Costantini recognizes the company's technology is not for everyone – "not everyone is a responder" to the therapy, she acknowledged – but it fits nicely within the precision medicine wheelhouse in oncology, she maintained. In the phase II study, median survival in the treatment group was 17.3 months compared to 12 months in the control group, who were negative for HLA-A2 – a risk factor for a poor prognosis in NSCLC. Survival data compared even more favorably with current standard of care in the second-line setting, where median overall survival is five to eight months.

OSE – the company's name incorporates the acronym for "orphan synergy" – is "very pragmatic," Costantini said.

"We want to develop the best therapy we can in this area of oncology and be opportunistic," she toldBioWorld Today. "In the past two or three years we have seen different waves. The wave of targeted drug delivery. The wave of immuno-oncology, which is just beginning. There's a lot of noise in the field, and you can't always anticipate what will be important."

Also opportunistic is Frédéric Cadet, vice president of business development at PEACCEL, or Protein Engineering Accelerator, also of Paris. Although the company is primarily focused on its protein engineering and screening platforms – services for which it looked for customers from around the world at BIO – PEACCEL is beginning to move into the early stages of drug discovery, targeting proteins with applications in indications such as type II diabetes and short bowel syndrome.

Because drug discovery is beyond the scope of its core expertise, PEACCEL is seeking a partner for preclinical work. And Cadet is patient. He travels the world, attending meetings from BIO Europe to the Chinabio Partnering Forum. So far no match has been made, but every conversation builds another layer of trust.

"The best way to build relationships is to meet face-to-face, and meetings can surprise you," he told BioWorld Today. "Even if you don't see eye to eye the first time, you've made a good contact. It's a step-by-step process to build our network. The most important thing, from my point of view, is to meet."

And meet again, which is a principal reason that companies come back to BIO year after year. And, of course, for the parties.

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