Tue Sep 22
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Morning Coffee Service
Session Type: General Meeting
8:00 AM - 5:15 PM
Registration Hours
Session Type: General Meeting
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Welcome and Keynote Address
Session Type: General Meeting
10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
Networking Break
Session Type: General Meeting
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Access Is the Exit: How Value-Based and Patient-Centric Thinking Is Transforming Biotech Investing
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Health Policy & Regulatory
The rules of early-stage biotech investing are changing. LPs are no longer just backing great science, they're backing funds that can demonstrate a credible, defensible path to value from the moment a company is formed. The question isn't just can this molecule work? It's will anyone pay for it, and at what price?
This session brings together leading VC investors to share how they are fundamentally rewiring the way they build companies and their portfolios by embedding value-based thinking into their strategy to sharpen their investment thesis, strengthen LP narratives, and ultimately drive superior exits.
You'll hear how the next wave of VC investors are using value-based and patient centric thinking as an early-warning system: identifying disease burden, anticipating access hurdles, and pinpointing value inflection points long before IND submission. The payoff? De-risked science, faster partnering conversations, stronger valuations, and portfolio companies built to command premium pricing in a payer-driven world.
Whether you're evaluating your next investment, refining your fund narrative, or looking to differentiate in an increasingly competitive LP market, this session offers a concrete blueprint for what the next generation of biotech venture looks like, and how to get ahead of it.
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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William J Canestaro, MS, PhD
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Speakers
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Shaan Gandhi, MD
Pfizer, Cambridge, MA, United States
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Jon D. Campbell, MS, PhD
National Pharmaceutical Council, Washington, DC, United States
Jon D. Campbell, MS, PhD, is the Chief Science Officer (CSO) of the National Pharmaceutical
Council (NPC), which conducts policy-relevant research and communicates it with impact.
As CSO, Dr. Campbell leads NPC’s research agenda in concert with NPC’s board and research team.
After training at the University of Washington, he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, earning multiple appointments in Pharmacy and Public Health. Dr. Campbell is an author of over 350 manuscripts and abstracts in the field of health economics and health policy research. He holds an adjunct faculty appointment within the Center for Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health at Tufts University School of Medicine.
11:45 AM - 12:45 PM
Lunch
Session Type: General Meeting
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Metrics Behind the Money: The Health Economic Playbook for Builders and Backers
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Organizational Practices
In an era of constrained capital, early-stage biotech investors win by seeing what others miss — and HEOR is rapidly becoming the new analytical edge that separates disciplined conviction from costly optimism. This session unifies the science-first diligence mindset with the quantitative “metrics behind the money” that top funds now use to evaluate risk, commercial potential, and eventual payer acceptance. Investors will learn how HEOR-driven signals sharpen early assessments of unmet need, differentiation, pricing, and value inflection, while also revealing the evidence gaps that stall IC approvals or slow capital deployment. The result is a practical, high-velocity framework for picking winners in the pre-clinical landscape — grounded in the metrics that actually move investment decisions.
Moderator
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Melanie D Whittington, MS, PhD
Leerink Center for Pharmacoeconomics, Boston, MA, United States
Melanie Whittington is the Managing Director and Head of the Leerink Center for Pharmacoeconomics where she leads pharmacoeconomic evaluations of in-development and recently approved pharmaceuticals and studies incentives for innovation. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVR) where she advises on CEVR projects related to value assessment, economic modeling, and CEVR databases.
Speakers
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Meng Li, MS, PhD
Tufts Medical Center; Stifel, Boston, MA, United States
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Richard Xie, PhD
RA Capital Management, Newton, MA, United States
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Sorochi Van Sickle, PhD
Patient Square Capital, Menlo Park, CA, United States
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Nadine Zawadzki, PhD
Los Angeles, CA, United States
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Jason Shafrin, PhD
FTI Consulting, Los Angeles, CA, United States
1:45 PM - 2:15 PM
Networking Break
Session Type: General Meeting
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
From Evidence to Enterprise Value: The Role of HEOR in Healthcare Investment Decisions
Session Type: Educational Symposia
Final session details & speakers to come!
3:15 PM - 3:45 PM
Networking Break
Session Type: General Meeting
3:45 PM - 4:45 PM
Drug Pricing Policy – Implications for Investment in Post Market Study
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Health Policy & Regulatory
Global pricing policies are reshaping incentives for life sciences investment across the product lifecycle. Price-setting under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, automatic reductions in Japan, and European clawbacks all compress expected returns as products mature. For venture investors, these policies raise a critical question: how do tightening price controls influence the business case for post-market evidence generation, including HEOR and real-world effectiveness studies?
At initial approval, the health system, investors, and patients have the least information they will ever have about a therapy. Post-market trials and real-world evidence can establish value in routine practice, expand use into new populations, support earlier-line treatment in areas like oncology, or demonstrate alternative delivery options such as long-acting injectables. Each represents a potential value inflection point.
Yet many pricing regimes—including international reference pricing, caps, and automatic erosion—offer limited flexibility to reward additional evidence. This misalignment weakens incentives for lifecycle research despite its importance for clinical adoption and payer confidence.
This panel will examine emerging research quantifying the value created by post-market evidence and explore policy reforms and commercial strategies that could preserve or restore incentives for lifecycle studies. The discussion will offer investors a practical framework for evaluating assets in an increasingly constrained pricing environment.
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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Kirsten Axelsen
DLA Piper, United States
Speaker
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Darius Lakdawalla, PhD
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Darius Lakdawalla is a widely published, award-winning researcher and a leading authority on health economics and health policy. He holds the Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the University of Southern California, where he sits on the faculties of the School of Pharmacy, the Sol Price School of Public Policy, and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, one of the nation’s premier health policy research centers.
His academic research has focused primarily on the economics of risks to health, the value and determinants of medical innovation, the economics of health insurance markets, and the industrial organization of healthcare markets. Dr. Lakdawalla serves as associate editor at the Journal of Health Economics and has previously served in this role at the American Journal of Health Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His academic work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals of economics, health policy, and medicine, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Health Affairs, the Journal of Health Economics, and the New England Journal of Medicine. In addition, his work has been featured by prominent popular press outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Forbes, and the New York Times. Dr. Lakdawalla has also received the PhRMA Foundation Value Assessment Challenge Award, designed to encourage innovative approaches to defining and measuring value in health care, in 2019 (third place) and 2020 (first place), along with the ISPOR Excellence in Research Methodology Award, the Garfield Prize, and the Milken Institute Award for Distinguished Economic Research.
4:45 PM - 5:45 PM
Networking Reception
Session Type: General Meeting
Wed Sep 23
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Morning Coffee Service
Session Type: General Meeting
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Registration Hours
Session Type: General Meeting
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Financing the Gene Therapy Revolution: Creative Models to Unlock Multi-Million-Dollar Cures
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Health Technology Assessment
Breakthrough gene therapies are transforming the outlook for patients with devastating diseases such as sickle cell disease and spinal muscular atrophy, offering the possibility of a one-time, curative treatment. But with price tags often exceeding $2 million per patient, these therapies pose an existential challenge for insurers, Medicaid programs, and employers — many of whom acknowledge that widespread use at current prices could destabilize their budgets.
This session confronts one of the most urgent investment questions of the decade: How do we finance a pipeline of curative therapies without collapsing the system that pays for them? Drawing on the models highlighted in the article — including long-term amortization (“mortgage-style”) financing, risk-pooling innovations, and public–private partnerships — panelists will explore which payment structures are viable, scalable, and investable.
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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William V Padula, PhD
University of Southern California, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, United States
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Networking Break
Session Type: General Meeting
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
HEOR as a Strategic Advantage for Development-Stage Companies
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Real World Data & Information Systems
For early-stage biotech, evidence strategy is now a gating factor for capital. This session highlights how leading companies use HEOR to strengthen fundraising narratives, meet investor expectations, and accelerate partnering opportunities — and how investors can evaluate whether a company is ‘evidence-ready.’
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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William J Canestaro, MS, PhD
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Speakers
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Brian Finrow
Lumen Bioscience, Seattle, WA, United States
Brian Finrow is the co-founder, co-chair, and CEO of Lumen Bioscience, a Seattle-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing scalable, low-cost biologic drugs. His work focuses on advancing a novel manufacturing platform using engineered spirulina to enable oral delivery of biologics, with the goal of making these therapies more accessible and affordable worldwide. Finrow began his career as a corporate attorney after earning his law degree from Harvard Law School, advising biotechnology companies for a decade at Cooley LLP before transitioning into operating roles. He later served in senior leadership positions, including head of corporate development and legal at the leading next-generation immunosequencing company, Adaptive Biotechnologies.
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Chinmay Shukla, PhD
BridgeBio, Palo Alto, CA, United States
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Lunch
Session Type: General Meeting
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Patient Insight as Strategic Advantage: De-Risking Innovation in an Era of Pricing Uncertainty
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Patient-Centered Research
Amid growing global uncertainty around pricing and reimbursement for innovative medical technologies—and mounting pressure from aging populations and rising healthcare costs—healthcare innovation faces intensifying scrutiny of value. At the same time, capital has become more selective and development risk remains high.
In this environment, patient-centered research is emerging as a critical tool for enhancing both the clinical and commercial success of pipeline products. Recent advances enable rigorous qualitative and quantitative capture of patient and caregiver perspectives across the product lifecycle—from optimizing clinical trial design to informing investment diligence and strengthening value narratives in pricing and access discussions.
This session will explore cutting-edge methodologies, examine real-world applications for innovators and investors, and outline practical cross-stakeholder actions to embed patient insights more systematically into healthcare decision-making.
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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Gunnar Esiason
RA Ventures, New Canaan, CT, United States
Speakers
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Hayley Chapman, Masters of Health Science
The Synergist, Oakville, ON, Canada
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Joshua Makower, MD
Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Engineering; Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, Stanford, CA, United States
Josh Makower is the Yock Family Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at the Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Engineering, and is the Byers Family Director and Co-Founder of the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign. Josh is the Founder and Executive Chairman of ExploraMed, a medical device incubator that has created 10 companies over the past 20 years. He is also a Senior Advisor to Patient Square Capital, and an Advisory Venture Partner with Sofinnova Partners. Josh currently serves on the boards of Elevage Medical, ExploraMed, ExploraMed MDS1, Moximed, Willow, X9, Coravin, SetPoint Medical and VentureWell.
Josh holds over 300 patents and patent applications for various medical devices in the fields of cardiology, ENT, general surgery, drug delivery, plastic surgery, dermatology, aesthetics, obesity, orthopedics, women’s health, and urology. He received an MBA from Columbia University, an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Josh is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of The National Academy of Inventors and The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, was awarded the Coulter Award for Healthcare Innovation by the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2018 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Galway in 2024 for his work supporting and inspiring the creation of BioInnovate Ireland which has had a profound impact on the Irish Medtech Innovation Ecosystem.
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Julia F. Slejko, PhD
University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, United States
Dr Julia F. Slejko is associate professor in the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. She serves as co-director of the Patient-Driven Values in Healthcare Evaluation Center and as director of the Pharmaceutical Health Services Research Graduate Program.
Dr Slejko earned her BA in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado Boulder and her PhD with a focus on pharmacoeconomics from the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy Center for Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy. Prior to her doctoral training, she spent 7 years in drug discovery at Array BioPharma in Boulder, Colorado.
Her research focuses on real-world health economics and outcomes research, economic modeling applications, and patient-informed value assessment. Her recent projects included multistakeholder consensus on patient-centered value assessment and US public preference elicitation of health inequality aversion.
Dr Slejko is active in ISPOR, serving as co-lead of the Women in HEOR initiative, associate editor at Value in Health, and member of the Health Science Policy Council. She was co-chair of the Faculty Advisor Council 2023-2025.
2:00 PM - 2:15 PM
Break
Session Type: General Meeting
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
Closing Remarks and Reducing the Cost of Evidence Generation
Session Type: Workshop
Topics: Methodological & Statistical Research
Evidence generation sits at the heart of healthcare investment decisions, yet its cost remains one of the most significant barriers to bringing innovations to market.
This panel brings together experts to explore the core drivers of these costs and how emerging tools are changing the equation. Technologies like decentralized designs, AI-powered patient matching, remote patient monitoring and synthetic control arms will be a primary focus. Combining RCTs with real-world data bring additional potential savings with RWD-constructed external comparator arms, improving data interoperability, and improving RWD accessibility.
The panel discusses a direct message to investors: companies that embed evidence generation efficiency into their development strategy from the outset can compress timelines, reduce capital requirements, and de-risk the path to approval and reimbursement.
Speakers to be added.
Moderator
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Doug Foster, MBA
Advanced Data Sciences LLC, San Francisco, CA, United States
Speakers
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Ryan Ahern
Truveta, Bellevue, WA, United States
Dr. Ryan Ahern is Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Truveta and has more than a decade of experience in healthcare data and clinical research. At Truveta, Ryan leads the Life Science Partner team which focuses on developing new partnerships and ensuring those partners are successful in their research. He is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and practices at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle’s large county hospital. Prior to this, he trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has served as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center and New York Presbyterian; attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital; and instructor at Harvard Medical School.
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Pamela Tenaerts, MBA, MD
Medable, Palo Alto, CA, United States
Closing Session
Session Type: General Meeting
Final session details & speakers to come!
