Description:

How do I attract industry interest or participation in my therapeutic ideas? 

Please join us for the first INVOForward seminar during which Jim Sullivan (Venture Partner, Orbimed) will discuss a critical element in pursuing a potential therapeutic, namely the validation of the biological rationale, to biopharma and venture groups. Based on his biopharma, biotech and venture capital perspective, Dr. Sullivan will discuss new emerging therapeutic modalities and the importance of both genomics and additional data in target validation. He will share vignettes across a number of programs with respect to offer his perspectives on getting therapeutic projects funded by biopharma, biotech and venture. 

This seminar is part of the INVOForward Therapeutics lecture series focused on helping Northwestern researchers gain insight into how to build a compelling therapeutic data package. While the INVOForward mentorship program has four select faculty-led teams participating, the lectures are open to Northwestern Faculty, Post-docs and Students.

Other INVOForward lectures may be found here.

OUR SPEAKER

Jim Sullivan, Ph.D.

Dr. Sullivan is a Venture Partner with Orbimed and the CEO of two start-up companies focused on the development of novel therapeutic agents for neurological conditions including Parkinson’s disease. Previously, he was the Vice President of Research at Abbvie where he was responsible for AbbVie’s research efforts in a variety of therapeutic/disease areas including oncology, immunology, neurology, hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis. Jim has advanced more than 100 compounds into clinical development across a number of disease states and technology platforms. These include products on the market for HCV (Mavyret and Viekira), the-first-in- class Bcl2 selective inhibitor, Venclexta for hematological cancers, a new oral agent for patients with rheumatoid arthritis, RINVOQ, and multiple compounds currently in Phase II or III clinical trials. He has authored/co-authored more than 130 scientific publications and is an inventor on 11 patents. Jim is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University and serves on the board of a number of companies and foundations including Regis Technologies, Genomics Medicine Ireland, Genuity Science, MATTER Healthcare Incubator, Chicago Biotechnology Accelerator and the Pistoia Alliance. He earned his bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin and conducted post-doctoral research in neurobiology at Northwestern University.

INVOForward Therapeutics is a 6-week Northwestern mentorship program designed to accelerate biomedical commercialization at the university.

If you have any questions, please email INVOForward@northwestern.edu

Description:

Should the final goal of drug development also be the first goal?

Please join us for the second INVOForward seminar during which Mitchell Glass (CEO & Chairman, Accolade Pharma; Principal, Broom Street Associates) will discuss clinical significance as a primary endpoint in the development of a therapeutic. His talk will focus on the impact of clinical significance on sample size, biostatistics, and financing. Dr. Glass will discuss the relevance of biomarkers and how much one can rely on them. He will explore clinical significance in lieu of statistical significance and address scenarios where clinical significance may raise the bar too high. He will also discuss clinical significance in context of “failing fast” and licensing. 

This seminar is part of the INVOForward Therapeutics lecture series focused on helping Northwestern researchers gain insight into how to build a compelling therapeutic data package. While the INVOForward mentorship program has four select faculty-led teams participating, the lectures are open to Northwestern Faculty, Post-docs and Students.

Other INVOForward lectures may be found here.

OUR SPEAKER

Mitchell Glass, M.D.

Dr. Glass was Chief Scientific Officer at the University City Science Center (Philadelphia, PA) where he advised 54 client companies on strategy for developing and commercializing devices, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Dr. Glass was the principal liaison to academic stakeholders of the Science Center, and a member of the Keystone Innovation Zone Executive Committee.

Since 1999, Dr. Glass has been a principal of Broom Street Associates, which offers a full range of regulatory services to pharma, specialty pharma, biotechnology and device companies. Areas of focus have included narrative and document writing, medical product risk assessment and reduction, IND and End of Phase 2 presentations.

From 2012 to 2019, Dr. Glass has been Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Director of Invion Limited (ASX:IVX), with offices in Australia, and Delaware. In February, Dr. Glass spun out the respiratory assets of Invion into Chronic Airway Therapeutics. For the past year, Dr. Glass has been the Chief Medical officer of Tikkun Olam Pharmaceuticals, targeting FDA-regulated development and approval of marijuana strains under strict FDA regulations. In 2014, Dr. Glass and colleagues formed Accolade LLC to exploit non-oral formulations of Zafirlukast.

INVOForward Therapeutics is a 6-week Northwestern mentorship program designed to accelerate biomedical commercialization at the university.

If you have any questions, please email INVOForward@northwestern.edu

Description:

How do you protect your IP and when should you do it?

Please join us for the third INVOForward seminar during which John Haugen (Associate General Counsel, Northwestern University) will address therapeutic patenting and competition in the context of an existing IP landscape. John will discuss best practices for protecting therapeutic inventions and present various types of patent strategies (including standard approaches and less conventional paths) for securing protection. John’s lecture will provide insight into key considerations such as appropriate timing and quality of supporting data/evidence when disclosing an invention or filing a patent. We will touch on Freedom to Operate and the impact of other patents on licensing and commercialization.

This seminar is part of the INVOForward Therapeutics lecture series focused on helping Northwestern researchers gain insight into how to build a compelling therapeutic data package. While the INVOForward mentorship program has four select faculty-led teams participating, the lectures are open to Northwestern Faculty, Post-docs and Students.

Other INVOForward lectures may be found here.

OUR SPEAKER

John Haugen, JD

John joined Northwestern University in 2017 as Associate General Counsel. He is an embedded attorney with Northwestern’s Innovation and New Ventures Office where he advises primarily on Intellectual Property and licensing matters.

Prior to joining Northwestern, John was Senior Counsel of IP at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, USA. At Takeda, he supported IP aspects of business development including due diligence and transactional/agreement work involving acquisitions, spin-outs, in- and out-licenses, divestitures, and research collaborations. His Takeda practice further included marketed product support, Hatch-Waxman litigation, and management of patent prosecution. Before joining Takeda, John was an attorney in private practice in Chicago at the IP law firm Brinks, Hofer, Gilson & Lione working predominantly on patent counseling, prosecution, and litigation.

John received his BS in chemistry from Saint Louis University and JD from Washington University in St. Louis. He is licensed to practice law in Illinois and is a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

INVOForward Therapeutics is a 6-week Northwestern mentorship program designed to accelerate biomedical commercialization at the university.

If you have any questions, please email INVOForward@northwestern.edu

Description:

Please join us for a presentation during which Jim Audia (Audia Consulting and Third Rock Ventures) will introduce and provide insights into the stages of pre-clinical drug discovery, picking up from earlier presentations on target identification and validation, and focusing primarily on the discovery stages of Hit Identification, Hit-to-Lead and Lead Optimization, with lesser discussion on Candidate Selection and IND-Enabling Studies. Leveraging experience across multiple drug discovery campaigns, Dr. Audia will highlight the importance of stage-gate criteria for progression from one discovery stage to the next. It will describe the development and utilization of a compound testing scheme to drive the ongoing validation of the program as well as the continued optimization of the compound to identify and characterize high quality hits, leads and ultimately clinically competent development candidates. From a medicinal chemistry perspective the presentation will also discuss the importance of a connected assay scheme to drive the optimization of chemical matter based upon a multi-dimensional SAR.

This seminar is part of the INVOForward Therapeutics lecture series focused on helping Northwestern researchers gain insight into how to build a compelling therapeutic data package. While the INVOForward mentorship program has four select faculty-led teams participating, the lectures are open to Northwestern Faculty, Post-docs and Students.

Other INVOForward lectures may be found here.

OUR SPEAKER

Jim Audia, PhD

Since September 2019, Dr. James E (Jim) Audia has served as President of Audia Consulting, LLC, through which he engages the biotech community to help enable and advance their drug discovery programs and portfolios. Since November 2019, Jim has been a part-time Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Third Rock Ventures, engaged in company formation for a pair of newcos (including Faze Medicines, launched December 2020) and advising the broader small molecule-focused platform and portfolio company efforts. He is also Senior Advisor and Head of Medicinal Chemistry for Karuna Therapeutics, helping to advance their pre-clinical and discovery programs. From July 2017-October 2019 he served as Executive Director of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium, a collaborative effort of Northwestern University, The University of Chicago and The University of Illinois-Chicago, focused on enhancing biomedical innovation in the greater Chicago area. He joined the CBC after a nearly seven-year tenure as Constellation Pharmaceuticals’ chief scientific officer, where he oversaw the successful evolution of the company’s R&D efforts from a strong scientific base to a robust portfolio of clinical-stage assets and pre-clinical programs, including the BET bromodomain inhibitor CPI-0610 now in Phase 3 and a pair of clinically advanced EZH2 inhibitors. Dr. Audia had joined Constellation in January 2011 following a highly productive career in drug discovery at Eli Lilly and Company. He held several key leadership roles during his 23-year tenure at Lilly. As a Distinguished Lilly Scholar, the highest level of the company’s scientific ladder, he made seminal technical and strategic contributions to the Lilly drug pipeline. Over the course of his career, Dr. Audia’s scientific work has contributed to 18 clinical development candidates, including transformative contributions to neuroscience research through his discovery of both the first gamma secretase inhibitor, an industry-leading beta secretase inhibitor and a recently approved anti-migraine agent (Lasmitidan). Dr. Audia is a named inventor on more than 110 issued U.S. patents and has published and presented extensively. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of South Carolina and completed postdoctoral training at Yale University before joining Lilly. Dr. Audia currently serves as a board member for Constellation Pharmaceuticals, a board member and scientific advisor for Ribon Therapeutics, a scientific advisor for the Tau Consortium of the Rainwater Foundation and for the Alzheimer’s Association, consults for Nura Bio and Rheos Medicines and is a visiting scholar at Northwestern University.

For more information, visit: https://www.invo.northwestern.edu/training/invoforward-therapeutics.html.  If you have any questions, please email INVOForward@northwestern.edu

Description:

How do I position my project for success in partnering and/or licensing?

Please join us for the fifth and final seminar during which Niels Emmerich (VP and Global Head of Search and Evaluation, Abbvie) will share his insight into having a successful partnering/licensing discussion with large biopharma companies. In addition to discussing various entry points (from early stage projects to those that are IND-enabled or in Phase I Clinical Trials), Dr. Emmerich will share some strategic considerations from both the start-up & Big Pharma perspectives. He will provide his insight on what data and information Big Pharma is looking for at different stages along the R&D continuum, and will offer some practical "Do’s and Don’t’s" in the process.

This seminar is part of the INVOForward Therapeutics lecture series focused on helping Northwestern researchers gain insight into how to build a compelling therapeutic data package. While the INVOForward mentorship program has four select faculty-led teams participating, the lectures are open to Northwestern Faculty, Post-docs and Students.

Other INVOForward lectures may be found here.

OUR SPEAKER

Niels Emmerich, Ph.D.

Niels Emmerich is VP and Global Head of Search & Evaluation at AbbVie (ABBV). In his role, Niels and his team are responsible for identifying and assessing partnering and investment opportunities. Recent (2020) transactions that the Corporate Strategy Office and the S&E team were able to secure for AbbVie include new partnerships with I-Mab, Genmab, Jacobio, Alpine Immune Sciences, Sosei-Heptares, Frontier Medicines, and others.

Prior to joining the Corporate Strategy Office and S&E, Niels held several other positions at AbbVie and Abbott, and before that with BioPheresis, immatics (co-founder, NASDAQ: IMTX), and McKinsey & Company.

INVOForward Therapeutics is a 6-week Northwestern mentorship program designed to accelerate biomedical commercialization at the university.

If you have any questions, please email INVOForward@northwestern.edu