July 7, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Stéphane Boissel studied management and finance at the University of Lyon, France, graduated at Paris-Dauphine and obtained his MBA from the University of Chicago (Booth GSB), USA. Boissel has strong experience in both investment banking and the biotech immunotherapy space. In the early part of his career, from 1990 to 2002, Boissel worked at PWC and then for the investment banking group Lazard, where he mostly worked in principal investment in France, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Thereafter, he worked at Innate Pharma SA from 2002 to 2010, firstly as CFO and then as EVP and CFO. From 2010 to 2014, he was Deputy-CEO of TRANSGENE S.A. . During his tenure at both Transgene and Innate Pharma, he led several rounds of private and public placement and negotiated several international business deals. Boissel was also a member of the Board of Directors of ERYtech Pharma SA from 2005 to 2010. In 2014, he was CEO of Genclis, a molecular diagnostic company, before joining TxCell as Chief Executive Officer in April 2015. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elsalys Biotech SAS.
BioSpace interviewed him about what makes a CEO tick.
What was the last book you read and would you recommend it?
I read only novels, many in French but also some in English. I’m sure many of your readers would be more familiar with “The Son”, by Philip Meyer, or with “Canada”, by Richard Ford, two recent popular American novels, than some examples of modern French literature. I like books when they take me very far away from my business. And to me, books are at their best when they tell stories of adventurers that are either key actors or key spectators to significant changes in their world or environment over a long period of time. “The Son” is a very good, recent example of these books. It contains the ingredients of successes, failures, human values and a touch of drama. All the ingredients of a true biotechnology entrepreneurial story!
Favorite sports team?
I guess that very few of your readers will have ever heard of Olympique Lyonnais, the football (I mean real football, not the one played with the hands) team of my hometown, Lyon, France. I am 47 and I have been away from Lyon for 25 years but wherever I am, the first thing I always look for when opening the news in the morning is information about this team. I’m still a very big fan: season ticket holder, shareholder (the team is publicly-listed) and very recently I even bought a piece of stone (at a totally unreasonable price) with my name that will be used to build the new stadium, expected to go live in early 2016! It is very difficult for me to explain this love to anyone else, especially as my parents hated sports and the team has been a terrible team for years, playing in the French second league when I was young (and already a fan) and only winning its first league trophy in 2002. The club has yet to won a trophy at European level. I guess it has to do with the loyalty and pride of where I was born and where I belong.
Hobbies?
I’m a family man and I like to travel, read and do nothing when I’m not working. Working in a very fast moving environment does not give you a lot of free time. It is very difficult to disconnect, even more so with technologies that pull you back to work when you are home. So you need to take every chance you have to stay with your family and friends and find way not to think too much about weekdays. And you have to set some ground rules for yourself during weekends or holiday breaks: no emails, no phone calls and a totally clear mind when spending time with your loved ones. Quality is more important than quantity to me and quality time goes with a clear focus on what you are doing. Like when at work in fact! Anyway, all this is easier said than done.
Do you have a personal hero?
Inventors and creators are my heroes. One example is Louis Pasteur. Doing what he did with what he had at that time and creating the Pasteur spirit, still pretty much intact today, is just incredible. His name will still be remembered in the centuries to come. If he was in his forties today, he will probably be both head of WHO and CEO of the world largest biotechnology company! Less famous is Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Pasteur who discovered the plague bacillus (yersina pestis) during a trip to Hong Kong. When you know how difficult it was to travel at that time and the risks he took when trying to isolate the virus in the middle of an acute epidemic episode in a foreign and somewhat hostile environment, you can only admire him. After his time at Institut Pasteur, Yersin settled in Vietnam and started an agricultural business, which became a very successful and profitable business. A very good book was recently published on his life. Yersin’s is like the hero of a novel to me. As a real person, he is much stronger than Superman or other superheroes!
Best advice for a young person coming into biotech or healthcare today? Biotechnology is probably the most exciting industry to work in at the moment and will be for decades to come. Many biotechnologies or medical scientific advances discovered during the 90’s or at the turn of the new century, are only just starting to turn into applicable innovations and marketed products. This leads to more money than ever being invested in the whole field and especially in promising, early-stage new products or concepts. In addition, with aging populations and rapid advances in developing countries, this is not going to seize. As a result, this industry has now entered into a virtuous circle. Therefore, whether you are a technician, an engineer, a scientist or a manager, as long as you are curious, not risk-averse, not afraid to fail, resilient and ready for a daily intellectual challenge, you have chosen the right industry! One small piece of advice though would be to try to pick the right project and the right team so that failure, if any, will come from the great uncertainty of science and not from the absence of a viable business plan or from a poorly executed one.
After Bristol-Myers Squibb Wonder Drug Meets Endpoints, Will FDA Process Be Up to Snuff?
Our most popular story last week was about a new wonder drug that wowed the FDA. An experimental anticoagulant drug under joint development between Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Pfizer Inc. met all primary and secondary endpoints in a Phase III study determining safety and efficacy—and our readers responded. The hope now is it will be sped to patients as fast as possible.
That’s lead BioSpace to ask, what do you think about the drug approval process in this country? Let us know your ideas.