Preserving the Promise: Improving the Culture of Biotech Investment

Preserving the Promise: Improving the Culture of Biotech Investment critically examines why most biotech startups fail, as they emerge from universities into an ecosystem that inhibits rather than encourages innovation. This "Valley of Death" squanders our public investments in medical research and with them, the promise of longer and healthier lives.

The authors explicate the Translation Gap faced by early stage biotech companies, the result of problematic technology transfer and investment practices, and provide specific prescriptions for improving translation of important discoveries into safe and effective therapies.

In Preserving the Promise, Dessain and Fishman build on their collective experience as company founders, healthcare investor (Fishman) and physician/scientist (Dessain). The book offers a forward-looking, critical analysis of "conventional wisdom" that encumbers commercialization practices. It exposes the self-defeating habits of drug development in the Valley of Death, that waste money and extinguish innovative technologies through distorted financial incentives.

Explains why translation of biotech discovery into medicine succeeds so infrequently that it’s been dubbed the Valley of DeathUncovers specific decision-making strategies that more effectively align incentives, improving clinical and financial outcomes for investors, inventor/entrepreneurs, and patientsExamines the critical, early stages of commercialization, where technology transfer offices and Angels act as gatekeepers to development, and where tension between short-term financial and long-term clinical aspirations sinks important technologiesDeconstructs the forces driving biotech, recasts them in a proven conceptual framework, and offers practical guidance for making the system better

Innovation Meets the Translation Gap

Chapter 1. Stop the Madness and Cure Something

Chapter 2. Into the Valley of Death

Chapter 3. Clinical Promise ≠ Investment Practice

Chapter 4. Velcade, a Biotech Success Story

Chapter 5. Biotechnology and the Future of Pharma

Chapter 6. Why Pharma Should Care About the Valley of Death

Chapter 7. Porter’s Five Forces and the Market for Angel Capital

Chapter 8. Out of the Frying Pan: The Fire’s Not So Great Either

Chapter 9. Getting to Australia

Translation Gap 1: Universities Don’t Make What Companies Need

Chapter 10. When Is an Experiment Ready for the Valley of Death?

Chapter 11. Unintended Consequences of Applying for a Patent

Chapter 12. What if It Doesn’t Actually Work?

Chapter 13. Building a Better Mousetrap

Translation Gap 2: Good Innovation Is Not Always a Good Investment

Chapter 14. Due Diligence and Angel Incentives

Chapter 15. What Is Value?

Chapter 16. Angels at the Crux of Invention

Chapter 17. Investment: A Nuanced Decision

Chapter 18. Ready for a Long-Term Relationship With a Science Experiment?

Chapter 19. Investing in Hockey Sticks

Chapter 20. Harps for Angels

Chapter 21. Connecting Innovation to Investment

Translation Gap 3: Technology Transfer Wastes Money and Innovation

Chapter 22. Mitigating Supplier Power

Chapter 23. Preventing Speeding by Closing the Road

Chapter 24. Breaking Old Habits

Epilogue

Chapter 25. Epilogue: Why We Do This