J.P. Morgan: Will Biotech’s Virtual 2021 Launch Become the New Reality?

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Earlier this month at the annual J.P. Morgan conference, the biotech industry launched its encore to a wildly successful 2020 – virtually.  And, as is becoming the common scenario, attendees found both pros and cons to our new (temporary?) reality. 

“J.P. Morgan and the meetings around J.P. Morgan are such a fun week for us in the industry typically, but I have to be blunt: This week has been extra busy. I think the Zoom environment, and the virtual environment, has created an efficiency that’s good for everybody, except the folks that have to present the data because we have to present every 30 minutes without bio breaks,” OncoCyte Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Ronnie Andrews told BioSpace. 

Also good, Andrews felt, was the quality of the conversations.

“I would say that I think we had a chance to go deeper because we had a little more time – even though we were every 30 minutes with a new person, at least we got the full 30 minutes, versus having to leave and catch a taxi to the next meeting. So for us, it was an incredibly efficient week of getting to see a lot of people in a short period of time,” he said. 

Andrews, a charismatic and engaging industry veteran who regularly speaks to industry groups, pointed out that there are just some things that cannot be replicated virtually. 

“You’ll do investor discussions through the day. You’ll see the CEO of another company, someone you’ve been meaning to talk to, and all of a sudden you’re at the bar having a beverage and having a discussion which leads to follow-up business development opportunities. We didn’t get any of that this week so I think that is one of the downsides of not being in person,” Andrews said.

Spiro Rombotis, president and chief executive officer of Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals, a small New Jersey-based biopharma company developing cell cycle control-based therapeutics for cancer and other serious diseases, concurred that the virtual version of J.P. Morgan increased the expediency of interactions.

“Now, we were able to get up at 6:00 a.m. and do phone calls with other parts of the world. That made an extended session. So, I guess it depends on how desirable the portfolio is to outside partners and how one is able to organize themselves, but we’re very pleased with the outcome,” Rombotis said. 

Overall, Rombotis said that he missed the quality conversations, but not the chaos.

“We’re not missing the melee around the Westin or the Hilton, depending on which conference subgroup you are participating in, or the abusive hotel rates. So that was definitely a welcome respite," Rombotis said. "On the other hand, without the face-to-face dialogue, sometimes the message is missing. The intensity is missing, and we lose important aspects of the biotech fundraising process.”

Rombotis believes that effective networking and communicating cannot be accomplished the way it was during the inaugural years of the biotech industry.

“I think digitization is here to stay. We see this across the spectrum of our industry. Clinical trials, and our operations, and the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery and development. All of these events are irreversible so we cannot act as if this was 1979. We cannot act as if this is just a slightly bigger universe. There’s a far more complex ecosystem, so we need a modern structure for that and digital content will be necessary to reach that audience,” he said. 

We’ve all become familiar with the phenomenon of normal boundaries being turned inside out by our new virtual reality. But in this case, it was a positive thing for Jason Keyes, Chief Financial Officer at Equillium Inc.  

“We found that the boundaries of the conference, from a standpoint of the start and end date, seem to carry less meaning. Maybe they’ve been a little bit blurred. For example, we had meetings scheduled toward the end of the week before the official start week of the conference, and we still have meetings continuing this week. So it’s almost become a JP Morgan month, and I think that’s been exacerbated a bit with the virtual format in terms of blurring the boundaries of the conference itself,” he said. 

Keyes revealed that Equillium was also able to save a substantial amount of money.

“We’ve certainly saved on direct costs. I’d venture a guess that we’ve probably saved over $30 thousand dollars, when you factor in the cost of travel and hotel, meals, meeting spaces, etc., that we avoided this year,” Keyes said.

Equillium Chief Executive Officer Bruce Steel appeared to liken the conference a bit to candy.

“The reasons why it was sort of nice to have a break from J.P. Morgan this year are the reasons why it’s so fun, such a great meeting," Steel said. "I think a lot of us who have been in this business for a long time – I’ve been in biotech for 20 years and I’ve been to J.P. Morgan all of those 20 years with this year being the first exception – I think we’re going to be ready from a little bit of a break from the grind that is J.P. Morgan.” 

Anirvan Ghosh, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Unity Biotechnology, appreciated the online effort but missed the communication dynamic inherent in the physical event.

“I think having the meetings focused in one week gave it some of the intense engagement that JPM creates, and we were able to have substantive debrief sessions,” said Ghosh, a biotech and pharmaceutical veteran who previously held senior-level roles with Biogen and Roche. “The main drawback is that in-person JPM meetings offer the opportunity for connecting 1:1 with colleagues and business partners beyond the company to company meetings, which was missing in the virtual format. Also, there are a lot of social engagements that have business elements built-in – those are missing in the virtual format.” 

As for the odds of returning to that chaotic conversation in 2022?

“It will most likely be a hybrid,” Rombotis predicted. “I think people are going to find it very hard to justify travel budgets. We’re not going to be totally out of the woods for the pandemic and vaccinations by then, and there will also be logistical concerns because different parts of the globe are going to be vaccinated at different speeds with different vaccines.” 

“I think I would miss it next year if we had another virtual year,” Steel said.