初二BIO-Europe Spring® 2019in Vienna opened with a well-attended panel discussion on new partnership and investment models. Perspectives on the topic were given by participants with backgrounds in biotech, pharma, academic research and public and private investment funds.

Lucie Ellis, executive editor of In Vivo from Informa Pharma Intelligence, moderated the discussion. She began by asking the panel about what challenges startups face and where traditional partnership and financing models are falling short in assisting them.

Borja Carsi, an investment officer for the European Investment Bank, said access to financing is a problem he sees a lot. To help, the bank started a venture project three years ago to fund medium-sized enterprises, he said. It currently has 78 companies in its portfolio and provides EUR 1.7 billion in funds.

“We came up with an innovative product which has a unique take on venture debt. We are providing a quasi-equity type of financing,” he said.

马萨诸塞州综合医院研究所战略联盟主任加布里埃拉·阿皮欧说，她认为，除了进行临床试验之外，利用临床研究专业知识的能力是一个问题。

“At Mass General, we have 2,000 labs. It is the largest hospital research enterprise in the U.S., and we also are a general hospital touching on all therapeutic areas,” she said.

“我们的挑战是利用我们所有的基础科学和技术。她说：“我们希望让创业者尽早加入，为我们的研究提供信息，并帮助我们走上（创办新企业）的关键之路。”。

Johannes Sarx, managing director of LISAvienna, picked up Apiou’s thread by bringing up the gaps in culture and communication between scientists and entrepreneurs.

“第一个挑战是跨越好奇心驱动的科学和产品导向的研发之间的鸿沟，”他说。“工作方式完全不同。”

Careful team building is critical to bridging these gaps as is getting financing at an early stage, he said. “We don’t believe in the illusion of being able to turn a scientist into an entrepreneur,” he added. Financing can be a major challenge to finding and hiring the right team, he said.

礼来公司免疫学交易副总裁迈克尔约翰逊（Michael Johnson）表示，从制药公司的角度来看，虽然讨论新的投资模式很重要，但不应忽视现有的模式。

One thing startups should bear in mind when reaching out to venture capital firms (VCs) is that the quality of their management team will be closely considered, he said. “(VCs) will bet more on the management team sometimes than on the science,” he said.

However, for corporate (pharma) investors, differentiation of the startup’s technology is of primary importance. “What our management always asks us when we want to license something or acquire something is, ‘What is different about this? How is this distinguishable from what science is already out there?’” he said.

约翰逊说，虽然初创企业面临着融资方面的挑战，但大型制药企业面临着创新方面的挑战。他指出，这可能导致两者之间的天然合作关系，大型制药公司最近更感兴趣的是通过与多个实验室的研究合作，参与初创企业的早期科学。

他说：“如果是一家专注于早期阶段的公司，我们会考虑在一定时期内以研究为基础的合作资金（全职员工），目标是从中获得目标。”。

After establishing the targets, the pharma would look to bring them into its portfolio at a pre-candidate stage, he added. “The following collaboration would look more like a traditional licensing type agreement,” he said.

大型制药公司也在与风投合作伙伴进行更多的交易。这种模式允许制药公司通过基金进行投资，以获得一项新技术的早期战略观点以及它如何随着时间的推移而成熟。他指出：“我们也希望从中获得投资回报。”。“人们总是问，礼来这样做是出于战略原因还是为了回报，答案是两者兼而有之。

When working with big pharma, collaboration around an open innovation model is particularly important, Johannes Sarx of LISAvienna said. “It can be quite complicated when a large corporate company goes to a scientific institute and tries to control all the science from the beginning,” he said.

他补充道：“我认为，你必须确保创意不会在早期阶段就被扼杀，而这有时也是将大型企业引入项目的风险所在。”。

Sarx说，在创新的融资理念方面，众筹可能适用于医学技术或数字健康产品，但不适用于药物开发。他说：“要做到这一点相当复杂，而且很少取得成功。”。“我认为需要更多的合作资金，比如转化研究资金，”他补充道。

Gabriela Apiou from Mass General said she agreed with Sarx that open innovation and translational research centers are important for startups. However, they can require strong education and training components, she said.

“We have spent five years speaking to our colleagues in industry and academia about what training our scientists need in order to engage with industry,” she said.

“我们想要教我们的老师不是design a clinical trial or write a patent, we want to teach them the language of industry and what it really takes to go from one idea to a commercial product. That is not obvious. We need to establish this as a discipline,” she said.

Another solution, Marek Tyl, CEO and founder of the Global Innovation Forum said, is building larger mutual funds that will come into a venture early and stay on throughout the whole process.

他说：“我认为这非常有趣，因为这个领域目前非常零散和脱节，可以从一个真正了解发展的人的角度，从早期到上市。”。他补充说：“我在这里考虑的是美国的旗舰先锋车型，我认为这在欧洲还不存在。”。

总体而言，初创企业面临的挑战并不令人意外。专家组基本上同意，公司与其投资者之间的正确关系至关重要。企业家的一些收获包括：在早期阶段将科学标准化、尽早获得商业技能、对新的伙伴关系保持开放的心态，同时不忽视现有的框架。