Building A Business Model For Novel Antibiotics

By Ben Comer, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader

In one of the most difficult funding environments that small biotech has ever faced, how do novel antibiotics and other infectious disease therapeutics developers — a difficult funding space in even the best of times — keep the lights on? During a webcast in September titled VC Trends in Healthcare Investing: Current Pulse Check (hosted by Demy-Colton), which featured panelists representing five prominent biotech and pharmaceutical investment groups, Sara Jane Demy tried to find out. Demy asked the panelists what they are doing in antibiotics, and how they think about investment in that space. For several beats, no one said anything. Then Jakob Dupont, executive partner at Sofinnova, addressed the panel’s sudden silence: “I acknowledge the conundrum … it’s not an easy place to invest,” he said. “We face multidrug resistance, but it’s really tough to create value. It hasn’t been an area we’ve been overly successful in at Sofinnova.”