Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 228 - Edward Van Wezel - Founder BGV

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Episode 228 - Edward Van Wezel - Founder BGV · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:06
  So welcome back to another episode of the Bio Hub and
• 0:09
  Avetix podcast. Today I'm joined by Edward Van
• 0:13
  Vaisel, Managing Partner and Co founder of Bio Generation
• 0:16
  Ventures, one of Europe's leading early stage life science
• 0:20
  investors. Over the last two decades, he
• 0:22
  has helped build and back some of Europe's most successful
• 0:25
  biotech companies, including Assertor Pharma, which was
• 0:29
  acquired by AstraZeneca in one of the largest biotech exits in
• 0:32
  European history. In this conversation, we
• 0:35
  discussed the current fundraising environment, why
• 0:38
  Europe remains a major opportunity for biotech
• 0:41
  innovation, how BGV builds companies from scratch, and the
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  lessons learnt from backing some of the industry's biggest
• 0:49
  success stories. Pleasure to have you, Edward.
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  How are you? I'm very well, thank you and
• 0:54
  thank you for the invite to be your pet on your podcast.
• 0:59
  It's a real pleasure to have you seriously been looking forward
• 1:03
  to this one. I really want to start with with
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  you and your background. So you've had a a fascinating
• 1:10
  career spanning engineering, pharma, operating roles and and
• 1:14
  VC. What ultimately LED you to Co
• 1:17
  found BGV and and focus on building biotech companies from
• 1:21
  the earliest stages? I think you could, you could see
• 1:25
  this as as to be either lucky or, or just the, the
• 1:31
  circumstances that I was in at the time, I didn't really plan
• 1:35
  for it. So let's let's start there.
• 1:37
  So it wasn't, it wasn't the plan.
• 1:39
  I had finished my biochemistry degree and then some additional
• 1:44
  biochemical engineering degree and really wanted to get into
• 1:48
  the biotech field. I was lucky to ultimately be
• 1:54
  able to run a company, a spin off of the University of
• 1:57
  Amsterdam that we sold. And at that time I had some
• 2:01
  contacts with investors for the first time in my life.
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  One of which was a captive bank, a retail bank in Netherlands
• 2:08
  called ABN Amro. And the team that was active
• 2:12
  there in their life science portfolio of their private
• 2:14
  equity and buy out activities asked me to help them set up an
• 2:21
  early stage fund in the Netherlands.
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  And the reason really was they saw a lot of interesting stuff
• 2:27
  also locally, but it just wasn't mature enough for them to invest
• 2:31
  in. And so I, on hindsight, I, I
• 2:36
  don't think I really knew what I was getting into, but it's been
• 2:38
  a lot of fun over the last two decades, as you said.
• 2:41
  So it was, it was an opportunity that arose that I grabbed and I
• 2:47
  never looked back. Yeah, I love that.
• 2:50
  I mean, you guys have helped create and back some remarkable
• 2:54
  companies over the years. When you're looking at a new
• 2:57
  opportunity today, like what? What are the key ingredients
• 3:00
  that make you believe a company can become truly exceptional?
• 3:05
  Well, first of all, it's that is not easy to predict, right.
• 3:09
  So it's, it's hard to predict if a company ultimately will be,
• 3:14
  will be extremely successful or at least successful.
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  We do early stage investments. That means we're still at the
• 3:23
  early stage of a development trajectory.
• 3:26
  And sometimes the biology doesn't really work with us.
• 3:30
  So that also means we see failures.
• 3:33
  But there are a couple of key ingredients of course.
• 3:37
  And it all starts with the science and, and the, the
• 3:42
  novelty of that science and the potential to really mean
• 3:46
  something for patients ultimately have an effect on the
• 3:52
  standards of care for patients. So that you really add
• 3:56
  something, but it's not already there, but you add something to
• 3:59
  the market to the, to the benefit, the benefit of
• 4:02
  patients. Now, of course, there's a lot of
• 4:04
  ingredients that need to need to fit and, and, and you mentioned
• 4:07
  Assertive Pharma and some of the people involved there once told
• 4:11
  me, listen, Edward, we, this is a company, but all the stars are
• 4:15
  aligned. Everything falls into place very
• 4:17
  nicely, which is not always the case, of course.
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  But so the key ingredients for for these companies that where
• 4:27
  everything falls into place is that that of course the drug or
• 4:30
  the product that you work on really shows very nice results
• 4:36
  not only in the preclinical setting, but also in the
• 4:38
  clinical setting. You have a position, you have an
• 4:42
  IP, you have an exclusivity that allows you to develop a product
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  that you have a market where there is a lot of interest in
• 4:51
  social products and where you can really make a dent in terms
• 4:54
  of what I just mentioned in terms of the benefit of the
• 4:57
  standard of care. But you also have a team of
• 4:59
  people that can actually do this and execute this in a proper
• 5:02
  manner. You have people there that
• 5:06
  understand the business and talk to the right persons to get
• 5:10
  these companies financed and ultimately sold.
• 5:16
  There is a lot of activities of course under the surface of all
• 5:21
  these companies when when it comes to the real execution of
• 5:25
  it, the manufacturing has to fall into place should be no, no
• 5:29
  delays. Your competitive landscape is of
• 5:33
  course super important to understand and make sure that
• 5:40
  the position that you create for yourself, building a company
• 5:44
  will allow you ultimately to still be, or at least have the
• 5:50
  opportunity to play a role in the marketplace later on.
• 5:54
  So there's many, many ingredients that have to have to
• 5:57
  really fall into place. What we as BGV do of course,
• 6:02
  before we invest into a company is to do an extensive analysis,
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  including an exit analysis to understand what we think is a
• 6:08
  potential buyer landscape for a company for a product.
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  And all these analysis of course remain subject to not really
• 6:20
  knowing what the future has in store for us.
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  So we we do need to to look at the data that's are generated
• 6:28
  over time and the only thing that we can work from is what we
• 6:36
  have at that point in time. And sometimes we are lucky as
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  some, sometimes we're a little bit less lucky.
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  But so far so good. And I think we're still, you
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  know, in terms of performance of the investments have been able
• 6:49
  to show that if you do this right, if you bring in the right
• 6:53
  people, if you work with the right collaborators and Co
• 6:56
  investors, you can make a very nice, you built the very nice
• 7:01
  successful companies. Yeah, 100%.
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  You know, what also is potentially quite interesting is
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  you've obviously been doing this for a long time.
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  How has that process changed over the years?
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  Has it always been pretty similar?
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  So there's there's there is the general items that I sort of
• 7:23
  mentioned. So I think are in a way are
• 7:27
  similar, but the market dynamics are very different today from
• 7:33
  let's say 1015 years ago. We now when I when I started in
• 7:38
  this business, we did initial seed rounds of a couple of
• 7:44
  million series as of maybe 15 to 20 million.
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  That's all gone with almost a factor of 5, right.
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  So now we did. So the amount of money that we
• 7:54
  are raising for Series A companies nowadays is very,
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  very, very much higher. That means you're dealing with
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  with other investors, other funds.
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  You have a very different dynamic in terms of the exit
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  landscape which is constantly changing I would say.
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  So pharma companies change their strategies on a very regular
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  basis. I think what is the, but it's
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  still there is the is the fact that in this industry, the
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  healthcare industry that a lot of the innovation stems from
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  venture backed companies. A lot of the innovation does not
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  come out of the pharma, the bigger pharma companies
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  themselves. So that means we have a role to
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  play in this ecosystem. We collaborate with a lot of
• 8:41
  these parties. And I think what has changed is
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  that there is a clear recognition of that also from
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  from the market. We know that in this ecosystem
• 8:52
  we are we have to rely on each other.
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  We can bring at least part of the new stuff, the innovation to
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  the attention of these of these parties that can then ultimately
• 9:02
  bring a product to market and and do the whole commercial
• 9:06
  development of a of a of a product.
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  So there is overdose 20 years. The general ingredients need to
• 9:14
  be there on the very tip of the of the of the innovation in a
• 9:20
  particular field. You need to understand what
• 9:22
  you're doing. But the dynamics, the amounts of
• 9:25
  money are different. And I think there's always a
• 9:28
  wave in the market in terms of the interest in earlier stage or
• 9:32
  somewhat later stage development products developed products from
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  from the marketplace. So I think nowadays we clearly
• 9:40
  see that pharma although they they claim that they, they are
• 9:44
  really interested in relatively early stage assets, they still
• 9:48
  look for a significant amount of de risking usually after phase,
• 9:55
  phase 2A or so they get, they get really interested, but it's
• 9:58
  all depending on the on the specific products and the
• 10:01
  specific market that they're interested in.
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  So we are we currently have two companies that are in phase
• 10:08
  three. That was not something we did
• 10:11
  when we started out. So, so that that is in our
• 10:14
  portfolio. I mean that was not the thesis
• 10:18
  also under which we invested the nor the the the general thesis
• 10:22
  was OK, we get it to a clinical proof of concept and then we try
• 10:25
  to partner a program. So yes, I mean the dynamics of
• 10:30
  the markets have changed, but the general principles still
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  hold, I think. So the way you should do your
• 10:34
  investments. Yeah, I want to specifically
• 10:39
  talk about Asserter as well, you know, because it's it's one of
• 10:43
  your biggest success stories. Just just take us back to those
• 10:48
  days and and tell us a story about how the company was built
• 10:50
  and why it was successful. I think, I think they are so, so
• 10:55
  first of all, it's 10 years ago. So it's a long it's it's it's
• 10:58
  there's a book written about it. So you can, you can try to,
• 11:01
  there's a lot of time has passed, but but they're happy to
• 11:07
  do so. So at that time we were looking
• 11:11
  or we were confronted or some people came by our office with
• 11:16
  an idea and the idea came from a from a pharma company that was
• 11:20
  going through a reorganisation. People that we were talking to
• 11:24
  were actually fired in that reorganisation and they saw a a
• 11:27
  drug there that was shelved by the owner Merc US so MSD that
• 11:39
  they believed could mean something.
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  And what really triggered me, at least at that time was the fact
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  that there was a compound already in development, similar
• 11:52
  compound that had shown very interesting results in the
• 11:54
  particular kind of leukemia. And so, so we started chatting
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  about this. Now this was a very early stage
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  programme. It was shelved, but it was a
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  preclinical programme. It had never gone into humans.
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  So this molecule needed to go to a lot of steps before we could
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  actually show that it will be as good or hopefully better than
• 12:17
  what the drug that was out there.
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  We as an early stage investor thought, OK, this is an
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  interesting story. So let's see if we can try to
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  make this work. We then spent considerable
• 12:29
  amount of time negotiating A licence with the owner with
• 12:32
  Merck US to to get the rights to the products.
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  Because they were in a reorganisation and because they
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  were firing a bunch of people here locally in the Netherlands,
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  they were amenable to at least talk to us about out licensing
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  something out of their existing portfolio, even though it was a
• 12:53
  shelved compound. They didn't really see the
• 12:57
  opportunity apparently at that time.
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  So good for us. Also I guess it was hard to
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  predict. The drug as I said was for
• 13:08
  leukemia. The drug within Merck had never
• 13:11
  been tested in a leukemia model. So it was, it was actually
• 13:14
  developed for an anti-inflammatory application.
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  So then once we had the drug licensed, or at least almost
• 13:24
  finalised, I kind of by chance ran into a team of people in the
• 13:29
  US that had worked for this competitor for a number of
• 13:34
  years, had put this very similar drug into the clinic and knew
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  quite a bit about the field. So I told them, listen, can't we
• 13:45
  maybe team up here? You guys have the exact
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  experience that I'm looking for and I have two founders here in
• 13:53
  Netherlands and a very tiny company, so maybe we can do
• 13:57
  something together. So I, they were on the West
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  Coast, I flew them in, we flew them in from the West Coast to
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  New York. We went to New York, we met up
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  at a lawyer's office in New York.
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  And this was the beginning of a Serta.
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  So that joint team then of course needed to start
• 14:15
  fundraising. The US side brought in some
• 14:18
  people that ultimately were very important in the success of the
• 14:23
  company, some US investors. We were already committed of
• 14:28
  course together with a local investor in the Netherlands.
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  And then the company got going. We were able to move the drug
• 14:37
  very fast into the clinic, raised a lot more money
• 14:41
  initially, I believe 90 million and then later on 350 million to
• 14:46
  ultimately start late stage clinical trials and the drug
• 14:51
  kept on performing. As I said earlier, this was the,
• 14:53
  the, the, the guy that told me that was he was the chair of the
• 14:57
  board told me the stars are reliant on this one.
• 14:59
  Everything's going really well. We had no major setbacks, no
• 15:03
  major delays in the, in the development, which I can tell
• 15:06
  you from other from, from the experience that we have over the
• 15:10
  years that that is quite rare. I mean, there's usually biotech
• 15:14
  is known for you finance a company based on a budget plan
• 15:18
  and budget and plan and then they need more money, they need
• 15:22
  more time than projected, projected.
• 15:24
  But this, this day, in this particular instance, everything
• 15:26
  went well. We were able to push the drug
• 15:29
  into the clinic, got some very relevant data.
• 15:34
  All that time this company was in stealth mode.
• 15:37
  This was what you see nowadays a lot, but the company was in
• 15:42
  stealth. Nobody really knew what we were
• 15:44
  doing, although you could follow what we were doing on the
• 15:47
  clinicaltrials.gov. Of course, we were talking to
• 15:50
  the right investigators all in the US, not, not so much in
• 15:53
  Europe. And then moved to present those
• 15:58
  data at a conference in Orlando Ash, the annual conference, the
• 16:09
  hematology conference where at the same time we were already
• 16:14
  talking to pharma because of course in the meantime, we had
• 16:18
  reached out to a few pharma companies said, hey, we have
• 16:21
  this great drug, but we also have great data.
• 16:23
  Why don't you have a look? We saw that the data were
• 16:26
  somewhat differentiated from this one competitor that was was
• 16:29
  ahead of us. There was also also a lot of Co
• 16:32
  competition behind us in the meantime.
• 16:35
  And we were able to sell the drug in a kind of competitive
• 16:38
  bid bid against to, to Astra Zeneca for the 7.3 billion,
• 16:44
  which was of course a humongous success within three years.
• 16:48
  And that of course, I, I, I couldn't have imagined when we
• 16:50
  started talking to those guys early, before we even founded
• 16:56
  the company in 2011 and 12. So it went relatively fast.
• 17:02
  Everything went well. And one of the ingredients of
• 17:08
  course the the lead compound that I forgot to mention is of
• 17:11
  course came out of a pharma environment.
• 17:14
  Most of what we see is from an academic environment.
• 17:17
  And the the difference is of course that the scrutiny of a of
• 17:22
  a pharma company on, on drug development, knowing what to do,
• 17:28
  doing all the right, having that data already in terms of safety
• 17:32
  data from safety pharmacology data, all that was already
• 17:35
  available. So at least most of it.
• 17:38
  So that was helpful from the beginning onwards.
• 17:41
  But and the drug is currently on the market and it's selling well
• 17:46
  over 3 billion last year, so 3 1/2 I believe.
• 17:51
  So it's doing, it's doing great and which is of course what you
• 17:56
  would really like to see is that it actually is a successful drug
• 17:59
  and and beneficial to patients. It's an incredible story.
• 18:03
  It's a really incredible story when obviously the the drug was
• 18:09
  a massive part of the success obviously, but how big was just
• 18:14
  bringing in the right talent around that, especially early
• 18:17
  days in in the success that came.
• 18:20
  Yeah, ultimately it was pivotal. I think, you know, if we would
• 18:24
  have pushed this drug from base from the Netherlands, we would
• 18:27
  have had a very difficult time to get sufficient funding in and
• 18:31
  also would not have had the experience that the people had
• 18:35
  that had worked on the competitive drug is drug called
• 18:39
  ibrutinib with a company called Pharmacyclics.
• 18:44
  That would have meant we didn't would not have had the direct
• 18:47
  contact to the key investigators in the field that would provide
• 18:52
  us access to patients and also knew this space of the BTK
• 18:58
  inhibitors really well. So I think it was very
• 19:01
  important, but it wasn't, I mean, I literally bumped into
• 19:09
  those people on a conference, the side conference of the JPM
• 19:13
  conference in the, in San Francisco, the biotech showcase
• 19:16
  it's called. And they were looking to, for me
• 19:19
  as an investor to invest in the project that they had
• 19:22
  identified. And I sort of turned it around
• 19:25
  and said, I have a project for you to look at and maybe we can
• 19:27
  do something together. So I can't say it was really
• 19:30
  planned, but in on hindsight, of course it was very important to
• 19:33
  bring in this this group of people.
• 19:36
  I love that. I love that way the way that
• 19:38
  happened. And it also brings on to another
• 19:40
  topic as well, right? Because there's there's always
• 19:43
  been this constant debate around Europe versus US, like where,
• 19:47
  where should you base what, what do you think about generally
• 19:53
  just how the current European biotech landscape looks right
• 19:57
  now in comparison to to what it was sort of 10 years ago?
• 20:02
  Well, listen, I think the opportunity's still extremely,
• 20:05
  extremely broad and, and, and I think it's big in, in terms of
• 20:09
  size if, if you just look at the amount of science that is
• 20:14
  produced in like scientific papers, IP that is being filed,
• 20:19
  we're not, we're not much lower than the US.
• 20:22
  So I think the, the opportunity's still there.
• 20:24
  That's that's there's certainly very interesting new innovative
• 20:30
  science being produced. So that's sort of the base of
• 20:34
  it. And I think that is something
• 20:39
  that is I think recognised throughout.
• 20:41
  I don't, I don't think people people dispute that.
• 20:44
  The problem is of course the translation of that research
• 20:47
  into a potential product and company that can actually, so
• 20:53
  you're actually using and apply the innovation that was that was
• 20:59
  generated. That remains a problem we have,
• 21:02
  we lack the capital markets that the US has and we lack the large
• 21:08
  amount of investors with concealable bound of of cash
• 21:12
  available to support that innovation.
• 21:15
  And maybe also we lack some of that risk appetite that we as as
• 21:22
  venture capitalists and of course need to have.
• 21:25
  But culturally is is not as strong within Europe.
• 21:29
  And and that means that people are more careful, are not
• 21:34
  willing to put money at risk when perhaps in other
• 21:38
  geographies people would do that.
• 21:41
  So that is also that's a point. And that that ties in also to
• 21:46
  the availability of talent, of course.
• 21:47
  So you need people to actually do this.
• 21:49
  You need people to understand how it works to get this company
• 21:54
  financed. So that is also one of the key
• 21:59
  challenges that we have as a, as an investor is to bring those
• 22:02
  teams together in order to make these, these companies
• 22:06
  successful. And a lot of our companies
• 22:08
  ultimately find success across the Atlantic.
• 22:12
  We see that there's nothing wrong with that in terms of
• 22:15
  getting additional funding in terms of doing an IPO
• 22:18
  potentially. But that's all not doable in
• 22:21
  Europe. And I think, you know, we we are
• 22:24
  talking to the European Commission, we're talking to
• 22:27
  European Parliament to see what we can do to improve the
• 22:31
  European situation and try to things like for example, the
• 22:36
  fact that a lot of our companies do not do their initial clinical
• 22:40
  trials in Europe. They go to like US, but also
• 22:45
  Australia for example, because we have a much faster route to
• 22:49
  access to patients in Australia. It's cheaper and there's a tax
• 22:54
  benefit. So why would we spend time in
• 22:57
  Europe? So that makes the the case for
• 23:03
  healthcare innovations or drug innovation in Europe a little
• 23:07
  bit more difficult. And I think we just need to work
• 23:10
  on trying to improve that and making sure that that the trend
• 23:17
  of the significant decrease of clinical trials, for example, in
• 23:21
  Europe is, is, is stopped one way or the other.
• 23:25
  But there's a lot of opportunity and, and we see the, the field
• 23:29
  as still very strong in terms of, in terms of availability of,
• 23:38
  of new ideas, but that translation remains a challenge.
• 23:44
  I, I would, I would, I would, I was saying that we need to try
• 23:49
  to improve that by also making sure that on the government
• 23:54
  side, there is sufficient support for this industry and
• 23:58
  regulation can be harmonised. Be more general.
• 24:03
  You don't have to go to 27 countries anymore to get your IP
• 24:08
  done. But for clinical trials, you
• 24:10
  still need to go to every country, which is just a lot of
• 24:14
  work, so a lot of additional money.
• 24:17
  And compared to the US where just one, one playing field is,
• 24:21
  is very different. Yeah. 100% and you often get it
• 24:24
  right where you you have European based companies but
• 24:29
  fundraising and BD efforts out in the US in terms of the
• 24:32
  talent. Yes, yes, that's that's and, and
• 24:37
  again, you know, we tried to look for the best possible
• 24:39
  talent and I showed us a nice example.
• 24:41
  So that company was ultimately active in South San Francisco
• 24:44
  with a / 150 people on the payroll.
• 24:47
  And we had a little smaller, much smaller group here in in
• 24:50
  the Netherlands still. And I don't think there's
• 24:53
  anything wrong with that. But if you want to play a role
• 24:56
  as Europe, you need to be able to try to make sure that the
• 24:59
  talent and the availability of the of those facilities and all
• 25:05
  that is, is, is there. And yeah, I mean, we, we just
• 25:12
  try to look for the, for the best possible option for our
• 25:17
  companies to, to grow and to be successful.
• 25:20
  But it would be great if we can do that closer to home, of
• 25:24
  course for some of those companies.
• 25:28
  And I think the capital markets and the financial situation
• 25:31
  plays a major role there, right. So we, we simply do not have the
• 25:36
  capital markets to support. If you, if you consider an IPO
• 25:40
  in, in Europe, people frown at you like this is impossible.
• 25:44
  You can't do it in the but you can go to the US and currently
• 25:47
  the window is open and you see European companies going to to
• 25:52
  to the US currently to do that. Yeah, 100%.
• 25:59
  And look, that brings me to to my final question, Edward, which
• 26:03
  is my usual final question to to every guest.
• 26:07
  If you could have dinner with any scientist or innovator past
• 26:10
  or present, who would it be? And.
• 26:12
  Why? Yeah, I thought about this
• 26:13
  question a bit and it's it's it's not an easy 1.
• 26:16
  And I think there's, there's many, there's many scientists
• 26:23
  out there. I spent some time at the Pasteur
• 26:26
  Institute in France. So for me it will be Louis
• 26:29
  Pasteur. I would really like to have,
• 26:33
  like to have a, a chat with him. He's been so pivotal in many
• 26:37
  ways in, in, in, in, in medicine.
• 26:41
  He played a major part, of course, in, in understanding
• 26:44
  what it is to be to, for infectionology and, and
• 26:50
  vaccines. And it will be super, super
• 26:55
  interesting to hear his vision on what we're currently doing
• 27:00
  and how we could improve or whatever what we're doing.
• 27:02
  So I think that will be super interesting.
• 27:04
  But there's many, many others that that could also also be, be
• 27:09
  part of the dinner as far as I'm concerned.
• 27:11
  But that was that was the one that I came up with.
• 27:16
  Yeah, I love that answer. I know.
• 27:19
  It's like the angle on what they'd think in with today's
• 27:23
  technology as well. It'd be yeah, because I had to
• 27:26
  get. It together to speed but.
• 27:29
  And there's, again, there's, so there's so many folks out there.
• 27:32
  And then we have, we have, we've had the, the opportunity to work
• 27:36
  with a lot of incredibly good people.
• 27:40
  We're currently, for example, we're currently working in a
• 27:43
  gene therapy company with Kathy Highs.
• 27:45
  He's one of the, the almost legendary persons in gene
• 27:49
  therapy, a space where we now have a couple of companies
• 27:53
  active, which has gone through a lot of ups and downs over the,
• 27:56
  over the many, many years. And it's just just wonderful to
• 27:59
  work with those people that have seen all that development and,
• 28:01
  and, and now know what to do and are currently pushing a company,
• 28:06
  working on a company with us to, to do something in
• 28:10
  ophthalmology, which is, which is super interesting.
• 28:12
  And, and I think there's, there's many of those
• 28:16
  relationship with, with scientists, with people in the
• 28:19
  business, so many super bright people that are contributing to
• 28:25
  innovation in this sector. So that that makes it also so
• 28:29
  nice to work to work in this space.
• 28:33
  Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on,
• 28:36
  Edward. It's been a pleasure.
• 28:38
  Sure. Thank you.
• 28:39
  Thank you for the invite and good luck with the podcast.
• 28:43
  Thank you very much and please everyone like and subscribe to
• 28:46
  the Biohub and and thank you again, Edward.
• 28:49
  Thank you. Bye.
• 28:49
  Bye.